To Whom It May Concern
by Ieyre
Summary: Rhett attempts to rebuild his reputation in Charleston, with some mixed results after a mysterious figure and the God of Plot Device tries to stop him. It will be sunny, it will be funny...my entry for ficathon 09, COMPLETE AT LAST.
1. Prologue

**Here is the little prologue to my contribution to the ficathon. My actual prompt doesn't come into it until chapter 2, so I'll leave my sentence for the author's note at the beginning of that chapter. Also, please suspend all disbelief while reading this story because it is **_**not**_** serious or realistic.**

Since the prodigal son had returned to Charleston, Rhett Butler had done everything in his power to mend his tattered reputation. The good Charlestonian people were amazed at the lengths to which the formerly ostracized eldest Butler, who's poor mother snuck away during the war just to see him, was going to get back into the good graces of Charleston's people—from donating money to every charitable Southern institution, to championing the causes of Democrats in South Carolina. He seemed reformed when he brought his dear little daughter a year or two before (wasn't the news about her simply _dreadful_?), but his new bout of respectful behavior confirmed the long-held belief that a Charlestonian could never really help but be a Charlestonian. Butler wanted a place in their world, and the people were fully allowed to let him back in—provided he worked for it. They couldn't give something for nothing, it wasn't their way.

Of course, everyone did wonder about his wife—where she was. There were whispers that he might have left her. No one had dared to breech the subject with his mother, whom he was staying with indefinitely, but they had no qualms about discussing it in hushed voices in their own parlors.

Everything was going well for Captain Rhett Butler in his campaign to reclaim the position at the top echelons of Southern society, until one day, several months after he arrived in Charleston. It was right after he donated a large sum of money to St. Michael's Episcopal Church, for an expensive stain glass renovation project._ News and Courier_, the newly merged _Charleston Courier _and _Charleston Daily News_, printed a rather lengthy editorial praising Mr. Butler's exemplary donation to one of Charleston's finest and oldest parishes.

A little less than a week later, the following letter to the editor appeared:

_To Whom It May Concern:_

_In response to the editorial of Tuesday, November the Eleventh, 1873, written by a Mr. Alfred Smith, I have only the deepest disgust to divulge. The editorial's sole purpose appeared to be pad Mr. Rhett Butler's enormous ego, and by the end of it I was certain he himself had facilitated the article with his large wallet, evidenced by the money donated to St. Michael's. To the church itself, I can only recommend a frank consideration of the man they received the funds for their project from—Mr. Butler has expressed a rather adamant disdain for organized religion of all kinds in the past, and the acceptance of his money may be harmful to the church's reputation. Mr. Butler has a habit of referring to the Episcopal Church to his friends and close acquaintances as 'The Catholic Church with worse music', I would hate any embarrassment to be caused to the party of the parish in this matter. _

_I hope in the future this fine publication dedicates itself to articles on subjects more worthy than Mr. Butler's attempts to buy the regard of Charleston's people._

_With all my deepest, warmest regards,_

_Lars A. Cotheart_

The editor of the _News and Courier_ could smell a story from a mile away, and so, in spite of its rather unorthodox structure and its obvious criticism of the man Rhett Butler and not the article, he printed in the first morning edition after he received it.

The news of the letter spread like wildfire, gossip was so scarce these days and no one could provide it better than the exploits of Rhett Butler. Rhett read the morning edition just like every other man in Charleston and was equal parts flabbergasted and enraged by the inflammatory letter to the editor, coming after the last act that was supposed to cement his place in the city of his youth—just a hairs breadth away from social acceptance, and he was back where he started. He even went down to the editor's office himself, to demand an explanation.

He expressed his personal apologies to Mr. Butler, but directed him to the fledging paper's policy about letters to the editor not reflecting the personal opinions of the staff or the publication _en large._ Mr. Peabody (an old friend of his father's) asked Rhett—off the record, of course—if the allegations had any merit.

"You're as familiar with my past as everyone else in this town, Jim," he replied, testy after the trying day. "What do you think?"

He then asked the newsman if he had any idea of the letter's origin, to which Peabody truthfully claimed ignorance. He asked Rhett if he had any idea who wrote the letter. Not wanting to give the born snoop any more of a scoop, he begged off and left the office, somewhat cooled down.

In truth, Rhett had been trying to figure out who wrote it since he first read the dratted thing (and subsequently spat his coffee all over the paper). Truly, the text itself offered few clues. What was most annoying about being publicly and anonymously insulted in a city whose goodwill he was painstakingly trying to earn was that everything _Lars A Cotheart _accused him of was the truth. That in and of itself didn't prove anything about the identity of Cotheart, except that he wasn't creative enough to actually libel Rhett. Unlucky for Rhett, there were enough true story's of his bad behavior that no slander was needed to make him look bad—the truth was enough.

He often made his little quip about the Episcopalian church at parties, bars and social events—religion was a favorite incendiary topic of his—with his less than savory 'friends', especially during the War and immediately after his marriage. It was widely known in his former social circle his thoughts on _that_ particular subject, so he could only narrow down who Lars was to people he had known before he began his campaign in Atlanta to improve Bonnie's social standing. Certainly the enemies he'd made over the years were vast in their numbers, but something about the tone of the letter suggested more personal wrongs than those he'd inflicted on the people he scammed on the rocky road to financial, if not personal, success.

He wondered if the writer was Henry Reid, a man he'd known since his gunrunning days in South America, and who had the curious combination of traits that made him lucky enough to always get out of life-threatening situations by the skin of his teeth, but stupid enough to never remember how he'd gotten into the messes in the first place. Consequently, he consistently made the same mistakes, one of which was trusting Rhett Butler in business transactions and poker. Rhett swindled Henry more times than even he could remember. He couldn't help it, being a creature of habit, and Mr. Reid was as odious as he was gullible, so he never felt any real remorse about it. He would _still_ be cheating the man at cards if he hadn't thrown him and all other undesirables out of his social circle for the sake of his daughter.

He wouldn't put it past Reid to seek revenge this way. The main problem with this theory was that Henry lacked all the eloquence that was needed in a good writer and Rhett really couldn't see him penning something that coherent. It was the name Lars A. Cotheart that really pointed to Henry Reid because it was such an _obvious_ fake name. _Cotheart_ wasn't even a real last name, as far as he could tell. A _nom du plume_ with so little finesse in its execution seemed like Henry's style.

He used his widespread connections to find out Reid's whereabouts, which proved his suspicions incorrect. Reid, according to a mutual acquaintance in a flippant letter responding to Rhett's telegram, had run into a bit of trouble South of the border. Said trouble, according to the missive, involved an illegal cockfighting ring, two hundred and fifty Mexican War era muskets, and the territorial governor's daughter. The last the contact had heard, he informed Rhett bemusedly, was that Reid was in a Tijuanan jail, trying desperately to learn Spanish in order to negotiate a release. Entertaining as this knowledge was, it left the embarrassing letter-writer a mystery.

And embarrassing it was, especially for Rhett Butler's poor, long-suffering mother, who explained to all their neighbors, friends, and most shamefully, the pastor of St. Michael's himself that _no_, Rhett had not converted to Catholicism in order to hear the famous bell choir at St. Mary's every Sunday. His brother was the only one in the family at all amused by the letter, delighting in any slight at Rhett, the more public, the better. He was pleased to tell anyone who would listen of his elder brother's screaming matches with their father about the existence of God—never mind that the fights occurred when Rhett was about twelve years old.

By the time January hit, Rhett was ready for any way to restart his campaign. Between dodging questions from old Mrs. Arnett about his thoughts on theology to dodging questions from his mother about his wife and stepchildren's whereabouts on Christmas, December was a trying month. Mrs. Butler was perfectly justified in asking Rhett why he did not invite Scarlett to Charleston for the holiday, but inviting her would be an added emotional entanglement that he simply did not have the stomach for. Explaining to his mother his endlessly complex relationship with his wife was the last thing he wanted to do after trying to explain his endlessly complex relationship with God to her friend.

Rhett was sure his marital foibles could fill a thousand-page tome, if someone got it in their head to write it.

He tried to look at the New Year as a fresh start, and approached the first major society function after St. Cecilia's with the renewed energy of someone simply ignoring the draining problems. The event in question was a charity art function his mother was sponsoring for the Daughters and Widows of the Confederacy—all amateur Southern painters and sculptors. Rhett thought it'd be best to make up for the last debacle by committing to his mother's pet project. He volunteered to procure and rent a space for her to hold the art showing—he even had the perfect building, an empty warehouse that he was fully prepared to furnish at his own expense. He spoke with his mother in confidence on the subject, and had a few preliminary talks with the owner of the building about renting the space—all very unofficial. He planned on making a formal announcement the next Tuesday in the paper, announcing both the location and tentative spring date of the event. He even began to convince himself that this was an exciting bit of culture and not the glorifying of paltry scribbling for a good cause. Everything was going exactly as planned.

The day before his announcement was supposed to take place, this letter was printed in the paper:

_To Whom It May Concern:_

_Regarding the news of the First Annual Confederate Widows and Daughters Art Show's search for a gallery, those planning the event will find that 1458 S. Broad Street is currently being furnished and leased for their use for the next three months, completely free of charge. _

_Consider this the gift of a friend of the Confederacy and of your organization._

The letter was unsigned.

While everyone in the town was so awestruck they did not notice how strange such an anonymous donation was, Rhett Butler was livid. He was furious, he was irate beyond all comprehension. It was as though someone had read his mind, realized his intentions, and actually _done what he wanted to do_ just so he couldn't do it. After his initial fury subsided, he marched down to 1458 South Broad Street and demanded the name of the man leasing the building. The contractor in charge of the renovations for the project was prepared for the question in more ways than one.

"We're under strict contract not to reveal the anonymous donor's name, Mr. Butler, you see this person is real shy and doesn't want any attention drawn to him," Mr. Hendrickson told him, conspiratorially. "It's funny though, we were given instructions that if you were to come down and ask us we were to give you this," he handed Rhett an envelope with his named neatly typed on the front. He bid Rhett good day and left to continue his work, and Mr. Butler pulled the note out of the envelope and unfolded it swiftly as he walked out the door.

_I know what you are doing, and I am going to do everything in my power to stop you from succeeding._

It was typed, unsigned, unstamped. He crumpled it in his fist with fury. Someone—and that someone _should_ have been glaringly obvious to him—was trying to ruin his attempts to make peace with his people. The rage he felt at having his goal blocked almost masked another feeling that was returning to him with a vengeance: his hot, burning competitive streak, dormant for such a long time because of tragic circumstance, was rekindled by the ball of paper in the palm of his hand.

This was war.

**A/N: The information about the newspapers is actually true, funny story. Charleston's two big dailies merged in 1873. You also may have noticed a slight change in the story—let's just say that I fail at my own anagrams and leave it at that.**


	2. Lars and the Real Idiot

**This is my birthday present to myself, apparently. This chapter is dedicated to skyebugs, you inspired a good chunk of it, and the final scene I wrote for you…you are the Rhett to my Ashley/Crazy Archie.**

**My prompt, for PrincessAlica, was this sentence:**

**"Scandalously and truly. Always providing you have enough courage--or money--you can do without a reputation."**

**No other requirements. **

Charleston had not seen the last of Lars A. Cotheart when he wrote his infamous letter to the editor of _News and Courier_—not by a long shot. The only person who was fully aware of Cothert's influence in Charleston was Rhett Butler, because while the letter-writing campaign was his most public presence, the full scope of his actions was far broader. As petty as they were, Rhett found his mysterious challenger's actions endlessly annoying, which, he supposed, was probably the point.

The writer became the dandy of the society page of the paper, penning letters to the editor on an article every week—normally he would not have printed a regular contributor so often, but the whole town was buzzing about the identity of the writer, and Peabody knew when to consider journalistic ethics codes and when to pander to the masses. The letters were not particularly deft in their praising of the Charleston's Old Guard, in fact, the compliments paid to the 'right sorts of people' were clumsy, but combining flattery with an interesting enough vendetta kept 'Lars' sympathetic and intriguing.

After the first letter, he sent one about the coverage of a play put on by a well-known girls' school in the area. The Mayor of Charleston himself attended the production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and after noting the importance of the engagement, the missive had this remark to make,

_It was rather interesting to note that Mr. Rhett Butler was not in attendance—he appeared to be the only prominent man of the city not to come. But perhaps he enjoys the company of the Yankee officers in the garrison stationed in Charleston better, as I hear he attended the party of a Major Jacob Sands of Baltimore the same night of the girls' one engagement._

Damn it all, thought Rhett, he was only at that party because an old business partner and friend of his from blockade-running days, Art Gallagher, was former schoolmates with Major Sands. He wanted to talk shop with Gallagher, and the Yankee party was the place he insisted on doing it. Though truth be told, the reformed scoundrel was not at all sorry to be missing the seminary girls' concert—amateur Shakespeare was always painful. His mother had been perfectly understanding and said she would give his non-specific regrets when she went with Rosemary to the little production—now he was facing questions about his relations with Yankees, something he'd been meticulous to conceal the extent of when Bonnie was alive.

With every passing week, his reputation's cracks became more and more obvious. No amount of subterfuge could hide his past crimes when someone was so obviously trying to dredge them up. Furthermore, his attacker was doing other, less damaging things to Rhett. Most of them were harmless by themselves but put together all the needling was driving him to distraction.

Every time he turned around, someone was making an anonymous charitable donation that distracted from anything he might have done. Building projects, school scholarships, orphanages—every 'good cause' you could possibly imagine was being donated to in someone _else's_ name. His foe even had the audacity to donate on behalf of his _mother_ while making snide remarks about him. That was proof enough that this person was not an enemy of his family—he was being targeted, just him.

The letter that mentioned Belle's place was the last straw. _The less-than-savory reports linking Mr. Butler with several houses of ill repute are abominable—I beg that he refute them!_

The business deals he made when still a bachelor were nothing to be proud of, not even then, but most people who knew a thing about Rhett Butler had the good sense to ignore them. What was past was past, they would say…but even the Old Guard of Atlanta could not be charmed into submission after such a public outing of his activities.

Conveniently forgetting that what was said was completely true, Rhett was outraged by it. It was one thing to make _him_ look bad, but publicizing rumors about his connections to prostitution made his entire family look bad—and his mother and Rosemary didn't deserve that. Being a well-practiced hypocrite he decided to ignore the fact that their reputation would not be in danger if he hadn't helped Belle Watling set up shop in the first place.

Instead, he wrote a letter of his own to the editor.

_It has come to my attention that for the last several weeks a 'Mr. Cotheart' has sought to do damage to my character, through the cowardly method of anonymous letters to Mr. Peabody masquerading as notes about this publication. If the aforementioned man has a grievance against me, I ask that he face me, man-to-man, and say them to my face. I will not tolerate dispersions being cast on my character with no way to defend myself—be it with words or more extreme measures._

_You know where to contact me._

_RKB_

He knew the letter was melodramatic, but it had the kind of misguided Southern chivalry that would discredit the other man if he did not face Rhett. Either the letters would stop because Cotheart was a coward, or they would continue but not be printed in the face of disinterest. If he did not acquiesce to Rhett's demand the man was lily-livered, and South Carolinans had not interest in run-of-the-mill cowards.

Instead, the third scenario occurred: he received a telegram just two days after his knight errant bravado-filled challenge appeared.

_Meet me at the Lady and the Tiger saloon on April 12__th__ at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I'll have reserved the red room. We can discuss your numerous shortcomings in person._

_LAC_

He was surprised by his challenge being answered, but not displeased. This was better than simply getting rid of the man—Rhett was admittedly curious about who he was. In an obtuse way, he was grateful for the fight, annoying as it had been. Fending off questions about his business dealings and friends had distracted people from queries about his wife—more importantly, he distracted himself from her, if only momentarily and superficially.

Rhett only told his close family that the 'slanderer' had agreed to meet him—it would be counterproductive to facilitate gossip about Cotheart's identity. For some ungodly reason, though, he'd also confided in his second cousin, Randolph Butler Brigley, which was how he got stuck sitting in the plush red room of the Lady and the Tiger saloon with said gentleman on April 12th.

Randolph had the dark coloring of the Butler family, but beyond that had inherited none of the positive or negative family traits that made his second cousin stand out all his life. Since returning to Charleston, hard as he tried, Rhett was unable to shake Randolph. His cousin admired him greatly and persistently, and so eventually he was forced to admit defeat and accept Randolph's incessant presence. He wasn't particularly bright or interesting, in fact he was a kind by woefully dull soul. Being only a few years older than Rosemary, he had grown up while Rhett was banished and only heard about the eldest Butler boy from anecdotes, told in hushed tones by the more sympathetic members of the family. The stories of his many mishaps, though, rather than alienating him from Rhett, inspired avid hero-worshipping. His cousin was as caught up in the 'romance' of Rhett as many Atlantans had been at the start of the War. Randolph was a good sort, eager to please and Southern to his core. If Ross had been as much of a disappointment as Rhett was, the former social pariah was fully convinced his father would have taken Randolph on as a son and substitute heir. He was as malleable as they came, with no opinions that someone else had not placed in his head.

In the same way that his wife couldn't make female friends to save her soul, Rhett had very few men he was close to. He could charm women and children with ease, but other males of the species were put on edge with his intimidating wealth, good looks and that indefinable carnal quality that carefully and quietly threatened. So, in a way, Randolph was nice to have around—he was too empty-headed and admiring to feel threatened by Rhett, rather like the way an ant must feel about an elephant. Randolph was a loyal spaniel in temperament. He almost reminded Rhett of a dumber, male version of Melanie Wilkes.

When he informed the puppy that he would be meeting the man who'd been insulting him in print, Randolph insisted on accompanying him. His cousin was convinced that he was needed as a second in case a duel was fought. Try as he might, Rhett could not convince Randolph that there was no chance of a duel being fought—he strongly suspected the younger man liked the _idea_ of a duel far better than he would enjoy the real thing.

The room they were in was discrete and stylishly decorated in deep burgundy. The saloon in question was one of the most upscale places in Charleston, but it only bordered on respectable and Rhett was glad that they'd entered in the back way. He was anxious though, on edge about this meeting, and Randolph's incessant chattering was doing nothing to quash the bad feeling he had in the pit of his stomach.

"He's late," said his over-eager deputy, "Do you suppose he won't show, Rhett?"

With feigned casualness, Rhett examined the room beyond the color scheme. He was currently sitting in a walnut chair, at a matching walnut table with a decanter of brandy and two crystal glasses on it. Pushed to the side was a card table—Rhett guessed the room was used for illegal gambling. While not particularly tasteful, The Lady and the Tiger screamed wealth from every orifice.

"After paying to rent this room, I doubt it," he answered, dryly, staring at the crystal glasses.

At that moment, the door opened. Rhett's eyes were alert, and snapped to the door in an instant. Light shown through from the outside, casting the shape in the doorway in silhouette…an excruciatingly familiar silhouette.

"I apologize for my lateness, my train didn't make it in on time."

He stood up suddenly, jerkily, not in his usual carefully controlled style at all. He stared at the figure in the doorway. The figure in the doorway stared back, and while his stare was one of momentary stupefaction, the other stare was equal doses of triumph and unconcealed delight.

He was an idiot. He was _a complete and utterly moronic being._ It was so obvious, so incredibly glaringly obvious.

Rhett closed his eyes as his wife shut the door behind her. He fell back into his chair, rubbing his temples wearily with both hands. Randolph smiled, puzzled no doubt by the appearance of the enchanting young woman in the room when he and his older cousin were waiting for the blackguard that had insulted their good family name. Perhaps this beauty was lost—whoever she was, she was must have lost her way, and it was Randolph's duty to help her find it. If Rhett had been looking up at the time, he would have seen her flash his unknowing cousin one of the smiles she'd used countless times over the years—the 'I want something' smile.

"I'm sorry, sir, I don't believe we've been introduced, and I certainly wasn't expecting to meet anyone here but Rhett. You are…?" she asked, politely, her green eyes flashing charmingly and diffusing the bizarre moment.

"Randolph Brigley, ma'am," he sputtered, taken aback by the appearance of the graceful creature before him, "I'm certain we haven't met before, because I'm sure I would remember you if we had—"

"An anagram," Rhett interrupted, hollowly.

Lars A. Cotheart, Lars A. Cotheart, _Lars A. Cotheart._ He'd been repeating the name in his head for the last twenty seconds as a way to keep from punching a hole in the wall.

"I'm sorry, Rhett, what did you say?" asked Scarlett, casually turning from Randolph to her husband. Subconsciously she shifted her physical position ever so slightly, making Randolph the perfect human shield between her and Rhett.

"Lars A. Cotheart," he answered, slowly, "Is an anagram."

Lars A. Cotheart. Lars A. Cotheart.

_Scarlett O'Hara._

He groaned in frustration with himself.

"How the hell," he said out loud, "Did I not see that Lars A. Cotheart is a goddamned _anagram??_"

There was a very pregnant pause. No one in the room moved a muscle, before—

"You honest to God didn't know?"

He looked up and for the first time since she came into the room really saw her, standing there in front of him. Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler, in the flesh, dark hair in a chignon low on her neck, wearing a navy blue traveling dress and looking as lovely and dangerous as she always had.

It was Scarlett this entire time, Scarlett who had been the one systematically destroying his reputation in Charleston. How could he have missed the most obvious answer? Was it possible that he had a greater enemy than his own wife?

"No. Lars A. Cotheart is about the worst damn anagram in the world, too."

How, _how _could he have missed that?

"I picked it because I thought you would figure it out," Scarlett said, her voice one of mild surprise. Apparently she thought the letter about facing 'him' 'man-to-man' was some sort of ironic joke, when really it was him not seeing the forest for the trees. What was it that Occam's Razor said—the simplest answer is always the most correct?

It was almost as if, for the sake of dramatic effect, an omnipotent narrator figure had blinded him to the sheer blatancy of Scarlett's _nom de plume_.

Suddenly, Rhett was aware of Randolph's continuing presence in the room. His cousin was standing there between he and Scarlett, looking for the entire world like some child's exercise in 'one of these things is not like the other'. Slowly but surely, the cogs in the young man's slow mind were turning, and his stupid expression was transforming into one of faint understanding.

"Wait a minute, Rhett…is this—?"

Jumping from his seat, Rhett dragged Randolph forcibly by the arm to the door, opened it with unnecessary vigor and pushed him over to the bar.

"Here, take this," he shoved a twenty dollar bill into the dark haired man's hand, face still dazed from having undergone the dizzying experience of talking to Scarlett O'Hara when she decided to be charming, "Buy yourself a drink. Buy yourself ten drinks. And while you're drinking, repeat this to yourself—I was never here, I never met that woman, I have no idea where Rhett is. Got it?"

Randolph blinked.

"What?"

"_Bartender_!" The man running the bar in the main floor of the saloon came over, perturbed at Rhett's frantic demeanor.

"Yes, what is it, sir?"

He handed him the crisp greenback instead.

"Keep giving this man drinks. Whiskey," he said, the last word in a slight undertone. Randolph was now looking around the bar nervously, in an almost childlike way. "If he says no, tell him that Rhett says it will make him into a man."

He wanted Randolph so drunk that he wouldn't remember this afternoon—or at least so drunk that no one would believe him. He slipped the bartender a generous tip as a preemptive thank you and walked swiftly back to the door to the red room, sighed heavily, and opened it.

Scarlett was sitting down at the table now, legs crossed, jiggling her foot impatiently. She looked up when he entered the room and closed the door, and before he could say anything asked,

"Who was that?"

"That was my cousin," was his terse reply. He stalked across the room and sat down in the chair next to her. His anger was so all consuming that he did not know where to start railing into her, so instead, he allowed his fury to bubble inside of him, carefully controlled. Scarlett, in spite of her casual demeanor, had enough experience with his moods to know that he was holding back but could strike at any moment, and her body language reflected that knowledge. She looked as though she would bolt at any moment.

All of that combined with the red upholstery and bottle of brandy between them evoked some familiar memories.

"Why did he come with you?"

"He seemed to believe there was some chance that I would be fighting a duel with your alter-ego today," he poured himself a brandy and laughed, harshly. Her eyes followed the glass as it rose through the air to his lips. "Do you want me to pour you one?"

"I can't. I have an engagement later today," she looked at his drink wistfully. "Besides, I gave up drinking four months ago."

"How admirable," he said, blandly. The entered into a silent staring match, the tension in the room ratcheted up by the anger that Rhett was allowing to seep in his veins along with the brandy.

"Your cousin seems like a fool," she said, airily, breaking the silence.

"He is a fool—though I'm beginning to wonder if I'm not a bigger one." He smiled suavely, hard self-deprecation coating his words. She raised both eyebrows at his impeccable manners—clearly she'd been expecting a more blatant display of emotion. She should have known he always concealed his most intense feelings with the thickest smokescreen.

"So, you're the one who's been writing all those character-debasing letters." His voice was dangerously casual. Scarlett smirked, pleased with herself, until she looked Rhett in the eyes and lost the nerve to act so cavalierly.

"No, actually, I paid a professional to write them." He slammed his glass down on the table and she flinched. "I just told him what I wanted generally said and he did the rest, he even sent them for me."

Not stopping to ponder the fact that she'd actually _paid someone _to insult him in writing, he pressed on.

"And you leased that building for my mother's art show?"

"Yes."

He smiled unpleasantly, to which is wife glared, equally unpleasantly. It was at that moment that he realized something—yet another piece of Scarlett's bizarre puzzle fit.

"…My mother's been writing you, hasn't she?"

"Of course," she rejoined, boldly, "She keeps me appraised of all your activities, especially your donations to charitable and worthy causes." He wanted to slap that victorious smile off her face.

Of course…his _mother_ had been the one telling good old 'Lars' about his plans all along. That was how Scarlett had so easily been able to thwart his attempts to donate with her own 'generosity'. She'd been dogging his steps right under his nose, using an informant from his own house.

It was brilliant. God, if he wasn't so damn angry, he'd be impressed. Well, that was a lie, he was impressed.

If he wasn't so damn angry, he'd be attracted to her right now.

Which he in no way was.

He told himself.

"Dare I ask whose money it is _paying_ for all of this?"

Scarlett's eyes darted from the decanter of brandy back to his face evasively, saying more than words ever could. The question hung between them for a good ten seconds.

"So, let me get this whole story straight," he finally said, keeping the anger he felt in careful check, "Basically, what you're telling me is that the last several months the letters to the editor of the_ News and Courier _that seem to serve no purpose but to make me look bad were in fact penned by a _professional writer_ who my wife paid to slander me…with my own money."

"It's not slander if it's true."

"And then," he continued forcefully, all pretense at civility forgotten, "And _then_, my wife anonymously rented a space for a charity event, again, _with my money—_for the sole purpose of preventing me from donating a place in my own name!"

He stood up and threw his hands into the air in a rare sign of open frustration with her. Scarlett crossed her arms and glared at the table.

"For Christ's sake Scarlett, what in holy _hell _were you thinking?" He made no attempt to lower his voice or contain the self-righteous indignation he felt at the absurd situation she had put him in.

His wife was surprisingly calm in demeanor—for someone with as short a fuse as she had, Scarlett's was strangely cool. She'd been practicing this meeting for a while, that was the real reason—she'd come into it expecting this, whereas he'd been completely blindsided by her farcical reappearance in his life.

"Do you remember what you told me you'd do if I didn't agree to marry you?" she asked, her voice steely, eyes feline slits.

The question caught him so off-guard that for a moment he forgot his anger.

"No," he answered, truthfully.

"You threatened to stand outside my window and serenade me until I was compromised and I'd be forced to marry you," she informed him, coldly. Rhett could suddenly see the entire scene play out in his memory—her initial refusals, which he met at every turn with excuses and misdirection until he finally resorted to seduction to get what he wanted—her. This threat was one of several he concocted on the way over to Pitty's. He'd found the idea very amusing at the time and had been fully prepared to carry out his threat if she hadn't acquiesced then—now, staring into those bright green eyes that were so intensely burning into his, he didn't think it was funny at all.

"And what does that have to do with anything?"

"Consider this my version of that."

As soon as the words registered, he remembered how angry he was.

"What the hell kind of logic is _that_??" he growled, "How can you even compare what I said to what you're doing now?"

"Well, you were quite prepared to fight everyone, including me, to get what you wanted," she said matter-of-factly. Scarlett rose to her feet in a fashion bordering on regal, and she circled the table, approaching him with all the grace of a leopardess—as if she was channeling her husband's jungle cat instincts. "And, like you, I'm not willing to give up what I want without a fight."

She was right in front of him now, no more than six inches away—Rhett's blood was pounding, he could feel a rush of adrenaline and he wasn't sure if it came from holding back from killing her or denying himself what he _really_ wanted to do to her.

Scarlett raised her hand carefully, gently touching the breast pocket of his jacket in an intimate way. He was as mesmerized by the action as if he was a mouse and she was a cobra.

"And just a warning, Rhett," she cooed, softly, "I can fight just as _dirty_ as you can."

His hand was around her wrist in a second, and he roughly tore the balled fist away from him, willing himself not to think about how quickly his heartbeat had increased when she'd so artlessly touched him. Damn him, he still wanted her more than any other woman—harpy that she was.

After he practically threw her arm back at her, and Scarlett rubbed her wrist ruefully. His grip was painful.

"You've taken great pleasure the last few months, making me look the fool, haven't you, Mrs. Butler?" It was easier to just insult her, to goad, and he kept reminding himself just how furious he was—this was familiar, comfortable territory for him. He crossed back around to the other side of the table, making the necessary space between them.

"I consider my actions to be those of a concerned citizen," she shot back, "I'm only warning the people of Charleston what you are, I didn't even have to make anything up to make you look bad."

"Has it occurred to you even once while you've been executing this insane scheme that all these allegations against me implicate you as well?" He paced from one end of the cramped room to the other, feeling claustrophobic and stifled by the luxuriant trimmings. It just _figured_ that Scarlett was the one who'd rented this room. "What about Wade and Ella? Have you stopped to think about what all this mud-slinging will mean for _them_?"

"If you divorce me, what will your precious reputation matter to my children? Do you think Wade and Ella will give a damn what the old biddies in Charleston think of you?" She was red with indignant anger, every emotional fluctuation dancing across her beautiful face. "If their mother is a divorcee you will be the least of their worries."

Maybe for the first time, Rhett really saw the concern she felt for her children—her rage was as much on their behalf as it was on hers. His wife was not graced with his gift for concealing what he felt—she was as much an open book as she'd ever been, and the honesty in her passionate outbursts about her children was obvious. He wished he could not read her so well, because guilt at the way he'd treated his stepchildren now threatened to overtake his anger at her.

"I haven't filed for divorce." It was neither an affirmation nor a denial of the validity of her words. Legally, no, he had not divorced his wife—what would be the point? Scarlett would fight it with every ounce of her being, and even if she didn't, divorce was incredibly difficult to get in Georgia, never mind South Carolina.

"Whether you have or you haven't, it makes no difference. Everyone in Atlanta knows you've left me," For the first time since she'd come into the room and back into his life, anger and cool pronouncements gave way to hurt and pain. Her strong front was just a façade; emotional vulnerability had not fled her. "You said you would come back to keep the gossip down, but you didn't even come for Christmas." Her voice broke. "I understand you hate me, but couldn't you swallow that for Wade and Ella's sake and come home for the holiday, at least? For God's sake, they lost Bonnie and Melly, too—and what have they done to you, that they deserve this?"

She was right. She was using Ella and Wade as an excuse to air her own grievances, but what she said was stingingly accurate.

"I sent gifts," he said faintly.

"No one knows better than me how poor a substitute things are for people," she answered, eyes glassy with tears, swimming near the surface, which she quickly blinked back and repressed. Her words were touching him in a place he didn't think even existed anymore: his heart.

He'd never felt so out of his depth talking to Scarlett before—what had happened the last six months? Before it was always so easy to control the discourses between them, he could always misdirect her, guide the conversation away from the things he didn't want to face—it was how he kept the truth of his feelings a secret as long as he had.

"This didn't start after Christmas, Scarlett," he pointed out, changing his tact and the subject completely, "You sent the first letter in November. Something else prompted this."

"I thought you would know it was me. I thought you'd figure out that anagram trick," she snorted derisively, "Apparently I took you for a cleverer man than you are. I was so sure that you would see it was me and come back to Atlanta out of anger at me for doing such a number on your reputation in Charleston! But you didn't come back for Christmas, and when your mother wrote me after New Year's she mentioned the letter and how you'd been trying to find out who wrote it. And I was angry at you for not coming back, so…" she trailed off.

"You never did answer my question of what the hell you were thinking, Scarlett." Giving up all semblance of calm, he fumbled in his inside breast pocket, desperate for a smoke—anything to relieve the five or six conflicting emotions swimming beating the inside of his brain. "You've taken a real gamble—with everything you've done, another indignity and your reputation will be irreparable. You want to ruin me—ha! You should be more worried for yourself. There's a chance this whole thing will be backfire, Mrs. Butler, if word gets out that you're the infamous Mr. Cotheart. Incidentally, how do you pronounce that name?"

"Oh, I'm fully aware that we'll both go down in flames if I tell people it was me who wrote them," she snapped, ignoring his jeering question. "The difference is that you care what the old Charleston snobs think, and I don't."

He could not believe what she was saying…this woman, this vain creature who, in all aspects of life was on some level obsessed with how she appeared…he could barely understand. He'd always pushed her to stop caring what people thought, but she never had, not really. She'd built their monstrous house to impress people, she refused him a divorce because of the supposed 'disgrace' it would bring to the family. Now, though, now she was willing to risk being accepted into every decent home in the South for the sake of…what, exactly? Revenge, or…something else?

Unbeknownst to Rhett, a faint memory was pressing her to say those words, a man from her past…whispering something that up until the day Rhett left her, the day she started actually trying to understand him, she had not comprehended at all.

"_When you've been talked about as much as I have, you'll realize how little it matters. Just think, there's not a home in Charleston where I am received. Not even our just and holy Cause lifts the ban."_

"_How dreadful!"_

"_Oh, not at all. Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is."_

She'd all but lost her reputation in Atlanta, but before she realized it was Rhett Butler she wanted more than anything in the world, it had been nearly unbearable to live without other people's good opinion. She'd hidden behind money, but she'd missed the acceptance of good, honest folks. Mostly, though, she had missed Rhett, and the love she didn't even realize he was giving to her. He was the man who'd led her out of propriety and into the wilderness of rebellion, and then left her there alone to pursue respectability himself for the sake of their daughter.

Now though, now that she had licked the wounds he'd inflicted the night he left—and she was ready to fight, tooth and nail, to get him back. Scarlett would give up the good opinion of everyone east of the Rockies in exchange for him.

Freedom…she could do _anything_ to get Rhett back if she was truly free. And she would do whatever it took.

"You don't care at _all_, Scarlett?" he took a drag of his cigar, temper under complete control again. "Reputation's always had some sort of vague, obtuse meaning for you, my pet, if nothing else. I'm surprised at you. I've never heard you speak so scandalously."

"_You do talk scandalous!" _

" 'Scandalously and truly'," she quoted at him, grimly, " 'Always providing you have enough courage—or money—you can do without a reputation.' "

The cigar fell out of his mouth. Scarlett smiled at his shock.

"Someone once told me that…I wonder if he regrets it?" Scarlett dared to look him square in the eyes and see just how much he enjoyed having his words thrown back in his face.

"You love using what I say against me, don't you?" He spat, remembering how in the past she'd driven the knife in with his own utterances without even trying. "Funny how most of it sails over your head."

She ignored the insult and closed her eyes imperiously, in a familiar gesture—the Scarlett O'Hara dismissal of lesser mortals.

"If you'll excuse me, Mr. Butler, I have an appointment—we can continue this discussion later—"

She turned to walk out the door and suddenly he was next to her—surprise at what she said had not completely knocked the wind from his sails. He gripped her arm tightly.

"We are not done until I say we're done."

He twisted her around and forced her to face him again. They both felt a familiar rush at the action—for Scarlett, it was the hot-blooded force of his very physical presence that warmed her, for Rhett, the heady thrill of trying to best, to tame, to dominate her. Instinctively he pulled her closer to him, until their faces were only inches apart.

"I assume you don't plan on stopping what you're doing?" His voice was low, threatening and unwittingly sensual. Instead of pulling away from him and his aggressive demands, Scarlett moved towards him, brushing her dress against his legs almost…teasingly.

"I can think of one or two reasons I might," she breathed, huskily, tilting her to stare through dark lashes up into his eyes. He loosened his grip on her arm, his body realizing he did not need to hold her to keep her there.

_God, the self-control I've been forced to cultivate all these years,_ he thought, catching a glimpse of her cleavage when he unconsciously raked his eyes over her. He lowered his mouth, bypassing those gorgeous, pouting lips in favor of her ear.

"Not on your life, Scarlett," Rhett whispered into it. He felt her entire body stiffen in rage at the dash of cold water he'd thrown over them—that he'd _needed _to throw over them.

"Fine!" She wrested her hand from his loose grip and pushed him into the cards table, all seductive pretense forgotten. "I'll just go back to Atlanta, then—"

"Like hell you'll go back to Atlanta!" he raised his voice again, aggravation at the forefront of his feelings again, "You're staying right here in Charleston where I can keep an eye on you!"

Instead of yelling back in a fiery temper, her glower turned to an expression of very near evil delight. His own face fell as he realized what he'd just blurted out.

It was what she'd wanted to hear all along.

"Well, alright darling, if you absolutely _insist_," she practically sang, sashaying to the door, "I'll just go an unpack my things at your mother's. We can talk some more about," she paused and winked, brazenly flirtatious, "What you're going to _do_ to me later."

And with that, she flounced out the door, leaving her normally self-confident husband to wonder at his own latent stupidity.

In typical Scarlett fashion, she'd come into the world he'd been building so painstakingly for himself and in the space of a half hour completely turned it upside down. Somehow the charming minx he'd married had gotten him to _demand_ she remain in Charleston—was that her game, forcing him to keep her close for fear that she'd do more damage to his reputation if he didn't? Such a plan was just about outlandish enough for her to concoct—this wasn't revenge, she wanted him back.

_Oh_ did she want him back. The way she'd looked at him with such intense longing before prancing out the door of the gaudily decorated meeting place was proof of that. Knowing her, he would be safe from no feminine wile—or from any of Scarlett's unique box of tricks.

He sat back down in the nearest chair and glared at the half-empty brandy decanter, his feelings a far more muddled and mixed up mess than the cut and dry dead indifference he'd felt the last time he saw Scarlett. He wondered if throwing the container on the table across the room would help relieve his frustration.

_Scarlett made it look so satisfying, the first time I met her._

Incapable of enduring the claustrophobic space any longer, he waved a forlorn goodbye to the velvet red room and walked out into the main bar.

Randolph was where he left him, swinging from side to side on his bar stool, a line of shot glasses in front of him as long as…clever metaphors failed Rhett. He needed a drink. Sitting down next to his cousin, he patted him affectionately and wearily on the back, to which Randolph responded by keeling over on the bar. He snored loudly and rolled his egg-shaped head, knocking the line of shots over and scattering them everywhere. Rhett sent the bartender an appreciative look for a job well done and ordered a whiskey for himself.

To his supreme surprise, he found himself wishing for Ashley Wilkes as a drinking partner. It was a curious feeling, wanting the company of a man whom for so long he had alternated feeling disdainful ambivalence and consuming envy towards.

In spite of never caring for Mr. Wilkes, Rhett knew in some way that Ashley was the only other man in the world who had the slightest inkling of what he was feeling right now.

He was the only other man who knew what it was like to be pursued unwillingly by Scarlett O'Hara.

Rhett imagined Ashley into the bar. He invited him over for a drink—they sat down next to each other—Rhett blearily turned to the other man and said,

"You and I have had our differences over the years, but there's one thing I think we can agree on."

"What's that, Captain Butler?" His imagined Ashley asked, in his weedy aristocratic voice.

"Scarlett O'Hara is the most beautiful, manipulative _bitch_ that ever lived."

Even if he wouldn't admit it out loud, Rhett was certain his hypothetical Ashley secretly agreed.

**For all five hundred of you that guessed it was Scarlett, yeah I never meant there to be any question that it was her. Special thanks to the people who pointed out my epic failure at anagrams in the first draft of this. Yeah, I guess I can't spell Scarlett's name—or maybe I channeled her abilities at the English language, who knows?**


	3. Will Scarlett

**And now, the continuing adventure. I can't believe some of you thought I would end it with Rhett being moody at a bar—I assure you, there's more after this chapter as well. Apologies to Alexandria Ripley for shamelessly jacking her characters—but you know what, she did the same to Margaret Mitchell, so why should I care? At least I'm doing it with affection.**

Rhett wandered around Charleston for nearly two hours before finally returning to his mother's house—and that was after hauling Randolph's inebriated carcass back to his domicile, first. Early evening had descended upon Charleston, and as the days had started to get longer, it was still light out when Rhett crossed the threshold of the house he had purchased for his mother and sister's use. The smell of baked chicken wafted from the kitchen, and he wondered absently why dinner hadn't been served yet.

"I _tell _you, Eleanor, while it simply isn't done here in Charleston, it isn't considered in the slightest bit provocative in Paris or even London."

Ah. _That_ was the reason. A visit from Ms. Julia Ashley.

"I can't tell if Julia here sounds more shocked or annoyed by our narrow-minded Charleston ways, Eleanor."

And Sally Brewton! Well, this was a surprise—the two biggest female oddities in Charleston, here under his mother's roof. Just as he was about to round the corner to enter his mother's parlor and greet them, a terrible, horrifying thought occurred to him: what if _she _was with them?

He comically skid to a halt and craned his neck around the corner, feeling more like the small boy who had once spied on his parents' dinner parties than the middle-aged man trying to avoid public confrontations with his temperamental wife. Seeing only three woman in the parlor—two old, one middle-aged—he made his presence known.

"Good evening Mother, Sally," he tipped the hat he had yet to take off, "Miss Ashley."

"Rhett Butler!" His mother sprung from her chair, her graying hair in disarray. "Where have you been all this time? So much has happened—and you said you'd be back hours ago!"

"Forgive me, ladies—after this afternoon's—" He tried to think of a way to delicately phrase it and failed spectacularly. "—Meeting, I was quite waylaid."

"Where have you been, Rhett?" His mother repeated the question.

"I had a few…people to deal with," he answered, cryptically. "I was wondering why you left dinner so late. You haven't served it yet, have you?"

"Well, we couldn't very well start it without you," She was irritable and frantic, "Not considering—"

"I told you I might be back late this evening," he cut her off, in a rare display of impatience with his mother. Then, turning to the other women in the room, he continued, smoothly, "If I'd known that Sally and Miss Ashley were coming, though, I would have hastened back. You could have told me."

"We weren't expected company, Rhett, so you can stop being so short with your poor mother," Sally interjected, clearly amused. "Even if we weren't here, though, I'm sure your company would be expected." She smiled slyly at him.

Rhett chose to ignore the look.

"We came for two reasons, Rhett Butler," said Miss Julia Ashley, in her usual flat, to the point manner. "Sally and I came from Anne Brigley's—apparently we'd just missed you."

He groaned inwardly.

"And her boy, Randolph—really, Rhett, of all the people to entrust a secret with—let it slip that you'd gone out together to meet that character who has been sending all the diatribes to the paper.

"Now the boy had clearly been drinking, so I came here to find you, and confirm the last part of his story."

"Last part?" His confusion caused him to temporarily forget to ask his mother if they'd had any unexpected arrivals at the house.

"You didn't mention a second part to the story, Julia." Rhett's mother's forehead was furrowed in surprise.

"We thought it would be more prudent to ask him directly," said Miss Ashley, grimly. Sally Brewton could barely contain her grin.

"What did Randolph say?" He asked the question slowly, casually—all the while wishing he'd shoveled enough whiskey down his cousin's throat to kill him.

"Well, he seemed to think there was a chance that your Lars was a…Larsina, as it were. At least, he said that he remembered a woman coming to meet you—he couldn't seem to recall any of the details, poor boy," Sally said.

"He was far too intoxicated to remember much of anything," Julia finished, sniffing with disapproval and poorly concealed amusement. "Tell us, Rhett, is it true that Lars Cotheart is a woman?"

Rhett let out the breath he was holding in relief. This was not as bad as it could be. Randolph had not connected the dots, he only remembered a woman, not any details about her—he could laugh it off, tell them Randolph was a fool and Julia Ashley would spread it all around town. Then he'd find Scarlett and deal with her accordingly…

"A woman, writing such terrible things? Why doesn't her _husband_ have better control over her?"

Rhett, the usually calm and composed Rhett Butler, nearly jumped out of his seat at the voice.

His wife _was_ here. Scarlett stood in the doorway with the most maddeningly demure expression on her face, in her arms his mother's large silver tea server, which she primly placed on the table in the center of the room. She had changed out of her blue traveling dress into a more formal brown evening getup, a surprisingly non-offensive frock, and Mrs. Butler was positively beaming.

"Rhett, darling, why didn't you _tell_ me that Scarlett was coming?" His mother went from smiling at Scarlett to frowning at her son.

"I suppose with all of those spiteful and _pathetic _messages in the paper, Scarlett's arrival just completely slipped my mind," he said, tonelessly, and Scarlett walked over to him, beaming with genuine delight and offering a cheek to be kissed. He took her hand with an apparently tender vice-like grip and as he brushed his mustache over the smooth cheek, could not resist whispering in a softly dangerous voice before pulling away and smiling at the other women in the room.

"You're dead."

"Remember where you are," she whispered quickly back. To Sally, Mrs. Butler and Ms. Julia they could have just as easily been whispering tender nothings in each other's ears. Scarlett gave an affected giggle and sauntered over to her mother-in-law, who looked completely delighted at the arrival of the daughter-in-law her son wanted to throttle.

"Oh, Mrs. Butler, don't pay any attention to Rhett—he didn't even know I was coming." She was her most charming, the former belle through and through, and Rhett could see out of the corner of his eye Julia Ashley's narrowed in suspicion. She was not easily taken in by Scarlett's act—his wife would not be able to hide who she was for very long around such a sharp and wizened culler out of phonies. "I thought I'd surprise him. Ever since I first met him he's always surprised me with his comings and goings—if there's anything I've learned from your son," she shot Rhett a positively _adoring_ look, "It's that nothing adds to a visit like the element of surprise."

She was practically taunting him.

"Your lovely wife here is the second reason we came calling, Rhett," said Sally, and Rhett reluctantly turned his burning gaze away from its target to address her, "We heard a rumor that she had arrived in Charleston and simply _had _to meet her. It's not every day one gets to meet the woman who turned the hardened Rhett Butler's head." Mrs. Brewton raised an eyebrow and gave Rhett a look of approval. He glared back, annoyed that his friend should like Scarlett—to which Sally winked.

"And what do you think, Sally? Is she what you expected?" he asked, wryly finding a chair across from his wife (who was now strategically situated next to his mother). "Please don't hold back, Scarlett and I both value…candor." He inwardly laughed as those green eyes narrowed a hair's breadth. He was back in the game!

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Brewton, I'd love to hear what you truthfully expected from Rhett's wife," Scarlett responded, after a beat. "If there's one thing in this world I can't stand, it's a liar." She shot him a pointed look. "There's no bigger coward on this earth than the one who won't say how he truly feels."

"Spoken like one who has no gift herself for artifice." Sally and Ms. Ashley exchanged surprised looks—the little dialogue stooped in double meaning could hardly have escaped them.

"Well, she's certainly as beautiful as I had heard." Sally decided to interrupt the obvious verbal sparring match.

"But far too thin," Julia Ashley interjected, apparently taking the remarks about honesty at face value. "While she's here, Rhett, you must feed your wife some of our famous shellfish dishes—she looks as though one strong gust of wind might knock her over."

Julia Ashley was not the kind of woman to make such a remark unless it was the truth—Rhett swiveled his head over to Scarlett again, and found her awkwardly shifting in her seat under his scrutiny. She _was_ thin—thinner than she'd been when he left her in Atlanta, almost as thin as she was recovering from her miscarriage. How had he not noticed?—in spite of her brave front, she looked tired, too—worn. But of course, with everything that had happened to her this year, that made sense…

Rhett was disturbed to find the familiar pangs of concern wash over him, the desire to rise and cross the room to her, hold her in his arms, protect her, shelter her…concern mixed with his old companion these last twelve years, desire.

_Damn. Damn damn damn._

He quashed the feeling, or tried to, at any rate.

"You've never seen my wife eat, Ms. Ashley," he replied, nastily, to which Scarlett looked up and glared at him, "I'm sure she'll be alright in a day or two." Now she would never guess what he'd been thinking only a moment ago.

He could see the humongous amount of self-control she was exercising in biting back rash words. Scarlett literally opened her mouth, saw the amused look on his face, and closed it again—she had the momentary appearance of a goldfish. But the gob smacked look was, sadly, temporary, for after she closed her mouth her face resumed its usual shrewd, calculating businesswoman air. She turned in her seat, pointedly away from Rhett and towards Ms. Ashley.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Ashley, I was just walking into the room and I declare, I don't believe I caught what you were saying—something about a woman named Lars?" Scarlett asked, with a totally counterfeit, cloying sweetness. She smiled, dimples showing, but her eyes turned sideways to Rhett's in defiance.

Julia Ashley glanced over at the Butler family patriarch. His jaw was clenched, and the three older ladies were painfully aware of the indelicate-ness of discussing the letter-writer and his awful slurs in front of the unknowing, hitherto absent wife. Sally discretely coughed into her handkerchief.

"Well, I'm, ah—not sure if we should say." Sally's eyes twinkled mischievously. Knowing her penchant for stirring up trouble when it pleased her, Rhett opened his mouth to change the subject, but was immediately cut off by his mother.

"Oh, Scarlett knows all _about_ that awful Cotheart—Rhett's been writing about it in his letters, haven't you, darling?" Mrs. Butler asked, fondly.

"Of…course I have." How the hell—for God's sake, he hadn't even _written_ Scarlett any damned letters! But Scarlett had been corresponding with his mother, he thought, frantically, that must've been where she got the notion he was telling his wife about his public relations woes. "Scarlett and I don't keep _any_ secrets from each other," he said, without a tinge of guile.

Scarlett contained what he was sure would have been a string of Irish profanities, had she called him out on the bold-faced lie.

"Yes, I know all about those dreadful letters," she tittered. "Of course, it's all ridiculous stories and nonsense. My husband would never do any of those awful things—you should find out who _really_ owns that house in Atlanta, Rhett, and make the Godless man come forward." She slapped her hands together in moral indignation at the behavior of her husband. "And as for that dreadful Cot-, Coth…oh, whatever his name is, you should call him out and _shoot him_." She enunciated the last two words with gusto, enjoying the show she was putting on for him just a smidge too much.

"That idea is sounding more and more attractive." _Knowing her, she'd probably come back as some vengeful spirit…or worse, a banshee. _

Scarlett fluttered her eyelids demurely, looking for the entire world an adoring wife and not a woman who had just received a thinly masked death threat. Appearances suggested she thought every word that sprung from her husband's mouth was golden.

"Well, whatever you say, darling," she purred. "You know best."

Years later, in 1886, to be precise, a writer named Robert Louis Stevenson would pen a work about a London doctor who assumes two completely different moral personas by day and night. Rhett would read this novella and be horrifyingly reminded of this day.

"You never answered the question, Rhett Butler—" Sally's enjoyment was clear. "You probably know that your husband has a knack for slipping out of tricky situations, Scarlett," she addressed his wife, conspiratorially.

"I've heard," said Scarlett, "There must be some truth to that rumor, if he won't answer right away. What-ah…was it, exactly?"

"That 'Lars Cotheart' decided to answer Rhett's publicly issued challenge, and when he and Randolph Brigeley went to meet the blackguard they were shocked to find themselves facing a petticoat instead of a pair of breeches," Ms. Ashley supplied, smoothly. Scarlett faked astonishment half-heartedly, which didn't matter as one of Charleston's most respected personages was more interested in finding out if the outrageous claim was true, and was hardly paying attention to the wife.

He was not generous with the truth.

"What exactly did Randolph _tell_ you?" Rhett asked, suspiciously.

"Only that the last thing he can remember before getting so thoroughly intoxicated was a woman coming in the room," she shrugged, as if the whole matter was of little consequence to her. "He wasn't particularly coherent, hence my asking for a clarification."

"What a singular claim," said Scarlett, mildly. "Well, Rhett, everyone's dying to know, including me," she gave him a pointed look. "Was your cousin's story the truth or not?"

Everyone did look eager for an answer, especially Scarlett—somehow, he could not take his eyes off of her challenging gaze. It was a stare-off of monumental importance.

His mind was racing—what to do, what to do? He only had a few seconds to make the decision, and they were rapidly ticking away. If he denied the story, would she call him on the carpet? She was sitting across from him, cherry red lips pursed in a grim smile—God, _she might_. She raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow.

She would. She…probably would. It wasn't worth the risk, was it?

"Yes," he answered, finally, "Yes, she was a woman."

As the three older women in the room were all completely aware of the powers of their sex, and the youngest was the woman in question, no one looked particularly bowled over.

"A woman, young man?" His mother closed her eyes, scandalized. Scarlett quickly moved to pour her another cup of tea, which she accepted with the wane smile only someone who has been parenting Rhett Butler for 45 years would wear. "Lord, and while your poor wife is here…" she muttered to herself, looking up at the heavens in grief.

Ms. Ashley was pleased to have the story she'd suspected was true all along confirmed. Sally was always amused when Rhett got into trouble—she had been since they were children.

"Your life gets more and more outrageous as you reach your dotage, Captain Butler," she laughed, cheerily, at his discomfort, "Are you a magnet for scandal, or do you bring this on yourself?" When he didn't answer, she pressed on, "I don't suppose you'll humor the select few here and tell us who she _is._"

"I'm sure a handsome devil like youself has the power to make more than one woman angry," said Julia Ashley, sarcastically.

"Dear _me_," Scarlett trilled, "I hope the woman isn't competition for your affections." She gave a simpering smile, to which he responded with his own crooked smirk.

"Oh, I assure you, she isn't, my dear," he answered, not skipping a beat. Scarlett's beam dropped faster than a duck being shot out of the sky. "I'd never seen her before in my life—perhaps she's the wife of some poor fool I did business with in the War who thinks I've swindled him. If he is, I pity him more for his unfortunate marriage than anything." He spoke conversationally, enjoying the offended shock on his wife's face more than anything else. "The old girl was quite over the hill, and not much to look at—forgive my rudeness."

He could see across the room that, in spite of her best efforts to control it, Scarlett's temper was swelling like an enraged bullfrog. She grabbed a scone off the plate aggressively. Her breathing had actually visibly increasing, and he knew that she was fighting the urge to lob the hard pastry in her hand at him. Rhett felt an overwhelming spike of pleasure mixed with another, less-than-holy feeling that rousing her passions had always roused in him.

"Well, are you sure _she_ wasn't the one you did business with?" She dropped the 'sweet as sugar' routine like a hot potato. "Perhaps it's the wife whose been wronged, and not the husband," Scarlett bit out.

Rhett gave her a self-indulgent smile, with which he only sought to antagonize her further. It worked.

"My dear, I only do business with women who have the good sense to know what they're getting into."

"But who could, really?" She laughed, carelessly, anger seemingly dissipated. "I'm sure Mrs. Butler's company tires of all this dull talk about your business dealings, at any rate."

"Yes, Rhett, let's stop talking about all this sordid business with that awful man—er, person." His mother gave him a stern look before turning to the favored daughter-in-law and giving a much gentler and kinder expression, as well as a motherly pat on the arm. "Scarlett's arrival is a far more pleasant subject."

Scarlett returned her mother-in-law's smile graciously before wrinkling her nose at Rhett in the O'Hara equivalent of a stuck-out tongue.

Frowning, he decided to turn his attention to the guests…for now.

"I have to say, I really didn't know what to expect from Mrs. Rhett Butler." Sally picked up the conversation from the place where the spouses' verbal altercation had waylaid it. "She certainly doesn't disappoint."

"So, you're pleased with her, Sally?" he asked, bluntly.

Ignoring his terseness, she turned smiled saucily and allowed her eyes to wander over the Butler parlor's toile wallpaper. God, what fun this was! Clearly something was going on between husband and wife—normally domestic squabbles were awkward for all people privy to them, but somehow Rhett and his wife argued in public with far more finesse than the average 'pair of turtledoves'. They'd had practice, evidently. Rhett was hardly the easiest or simplest man to deal with—it stood to reason that his wife would be his match.

"I'm delighted. She tells the most…surprising stories about you. I'm learning things I never knew." She and Scarlett exchanged conspiratorial looks of amusement, and not for the first time, he wondered what exactly she'd said. How had his wife painted him? He'd presented himself as a rather strangely hobbled together work of a man over the years. Had she painted him as a lovesick, romantic lothario? A raging, jealous boor? A calculating bastard?

God knows he was some strange conglomeration of all three.

"She is a former belle, I hope you don't take all her little yarns as fact," He gritted his teeth and gave a suave smile. "She has been known, from time to time, to speak for the sole purpose of entertaining the masses."

"How you _do_ run on," Scarlett snapped a fan up from the table and began waving it in her face, peevishly. The doting wife was clearly not an act suited to her. Ms. Ashley was noticing, her shrewd eyes darting from husband to wife with no small amount of suspicion.

"Tell me," the woman said, her imperious voice, previously as brittle as bark, now was as pliant as young sapling, "When did you two meet, precisely?"

"April 15th, 1861," Scarlett and Rhett spoke in perfect unison.

She flushed pink in embarrassment, his eyes darkened in annoyance.

_Damn my memory,_ they both thought.

"April of '61? Dear me, that's just under 13 years ago!" Mrs. Butler exclaimed, in surprise. "I knew you met during the war, but I didn't know so early—why that was only a few days after they fired on Fort Sumter!"

"Thirteen years ago—Lord above, how old was she, twelve?" was Ms. Ashley's rather blunt question.

"I was a little older than _that_—" Scarlett said, a little sharper than she'd no doubt originally intended. "You'll pardon me if I don't say how much."

"Ah-my manners—no, excuse me." The crafty crone was instantly apologetic. "I forget these things matter to the general populous. When you get to be my age, tact is thrown out the window."

"It's absolutely darling that you both remember the day you met," Rhett's mother beamed. "Not many couples do."

"Well, it was quite the day," he said, vaguely.

Never would be able the excise the image of her as he'd first seen Scarlett, charming poor Charles Hamilton, from his mind—no matter how hard he tried.

"I'm sensing a story," Sally said, slyly, clearly noticing the near dreamy expression on her friend's face. "I bet it was love at first sight, wasn't it?" Scarlett dimpled and was about to answer—

"She married her first husband two weeks later," he dryly interpolated. Julia Ashley's eyebrows shot up as Scarlett glowered at him. "But as for myself, I was definitely—how should I put it—_struck_ by Scarlett, from the first?"

"Oh, ha _ha_, very—" Scarlett clapped her hand over her mouth, but the half-uttered angry retort was already hanging in the air. Rhett was delighted to see that all attention had turned to her.

"What is it, dear?" Eleanor Butler asked, concerned. "What were you saying?"

"Well-I, er—" He could barely contain his inner glee at her verbal fumbling. "I was only going to say—" she recovered, her eyes flashing. "That when we met, Rhett just didn't know what _hit_ him," she volleyed. He gave her a nod of amusement.

"Or narrowly missed him, as the case may be," he parried. Scarlett was no doubt going to give him a piece of her mind, before she wisely came to her senses and let the matter rest. There was a rather awkward pause, as no appropriate response to Rhett's strange comment existed in any etiquette book.

"Where exactly did you two meet?" Sally continued the conversation, finally. Ignoring the cryptic exchanges between married folks seemed to be the best way to deal with the situation.

"At Twelve Oaks, a neighbor plantation to my own kin's, Tara—in Clayton County," Scarlett said. "The Yankees burned it down during the War." She didn't bother to conceal her obvious contempt for Northerners. She was becoming more and more her usual self with every surreptitious insult she and Rhett swapped.

"What a shame. Who was the owner?"

"John—John Wilkes," Her voice faltered at the memory of Mr. Wilkes, the man Gerald had been such good friends with and who she'd wanted so badly to be her father-in-law once. She hadn't thought of him in such a long time. "He was a widower who died in the War. He was my first husband's uncle." She gave the necessary background information impassively, unthinking, not noticing that across the table Mr. Butler's whole body had tensed up.

The conversation was veering towards dangerous waters.

"Wilkes, Wilkes…I've heard that name before." Ms. Ashley mused aloud. "Now, where are they from?"

"Virginia," Rhett supplied, shortly. "Scarlett married a Hamilton, they're related to the Wilkeses—you may know them from Atlanta, Ms. Julia."

"Oh, I'm reminded," Rhett's mother said, tenderly addressing her most favored guest, "Scarlett…I'm so terribly sorry to hear about your former sister-in-law, Mrs. Wilkes. Rhett told me what happened."

Scarlett swallowed hard but showed no other signs of distress. Rhett suddenly felt older—and grayer.

"Melanie Wilkes, my first husband's sister…passed away, in September." Scarlett closed her eyes and rubbed her temple with one hand, explaining to the two other women the final event that had driven Rhett from her. "She was a dear, dear friend of mine. Everyone in Atlanta came out for her funeral." She laughed a little. "She was just about the most loved woman in Atlanta, I suppose it makes sense," she said, as proud of Melanie in death as Melanie was of her in life.

"She was a great lady, one of the best I've ever known," said Rhett, quietly.

"You know, I think she thought as highly of you as you did of her, Rhett?" She said, tenderness creeping into her voice. She spoke directly to him, as if no one else was in the room. "After you got her wedding ring back for her, she never had an unkind word to say about you."

_Little did the innocent woman know the _real_ reason I did it._

"She may have had some regard for me, but it doesn't hold a candle to how much she loved you." It was the truth—he told himself he was saying it because it was the truth, not because of the luminous glow the kind words gave her startling green eyes, or the way her dark lashes blinked away the tears as she smiled gratefully.

Ms. Ashley softly interrupted the moment of peace.

"What a tragedy. I suppose the poor woman left behind a husband and children into the bargain?" she asked.

Rhett's jaw clenched involuntarily and Scarlett's face fell. Ms. Ashley had proved just how momentary peace could be.

"Yes, she had a son, Beauregard—my nephew—" She glanced nervously at Rhett, "And a husband, he made it through the war—"

"Have you seen much of Ashley and Beau Wilkes lately?" he interrupted, rudely, tapping his hand against the side of his chair sharply. He didn't care about who Scarlett kept company with anymore, of course, but it would look strange if he didn't ask his wife.

"I've called on them a few times," she replied, levelly, letting his sharpness roll off her back. "They're having a real hard time of it, I think having people around is the best thing for them. India and Pitty try, of course, but they can only do so much."

"And how are the _mills_ doing?" He could not resist needling Ashley's weak spot, his inability to support himself. If Scarlett only knew he was the one who'd given Ashley the money to buy her out…

"I'm not sure if you both know, but I formerly owned a few mills," she pleasantly and informatively addressed the ladies, "Mr. Wilkes—that is, Ashley Wilkes, Melanie's husband—was my business partner, and I sold them to him not long ago."

Before she had to answer the usual 'what's it like being a woman in business?' questions, she turned her attention back to him, and said, "The mills have been doing quite alright. Should I send him a letter with your well-wishes?" Her lips turned up coyly at his fixed stare. "I've been giving him a bit of friendly advice—"

"_How_ friendly?"

He could not believe he had just said that out loud. Why was it when Scarlett was in a room he always forgot about everyone else?

Scarlett turned ashen before giving a bright, cheery laugh.

"You'll have to excuse my husband," Scarlett tried to play off the tense moment vivaciously, "You see, when I was a girl, I had a childish affection for Ashley…of course, it never came to anything," she waved her hand, dismissively, "And we're good friends now, but you know how men get silly notions in their heads." The dumbfounded husband watched his wife glibly dismiss her years of mental infidelity as some boyish fancy of his. Remarkably, Sally, Ms. Ashley and his mother all just laughed, and he had the surreal feeling of everyone being in on some twisted, feminine joke he could never understand.

"Why, Rhett—I never knew you to be the jealous type." Sally gave him a mocking grin. Even he had to chuckle—but for different reasons. He could see what she was doing—anticipating that Atlanta cousins might write their Charleston brethren about her supposed affair with Ashley, she was playing the whole thing off as if it was some delusional fantasy of his—and probably unwittingly, she was telling this to one of Charleston's most influential ladies and a known gossip. It was perfect—a stroke of genuine dumb luck or genius, he wasn't sure which.

_Amazing how she thinks of her own reputation so carefully while obliterating mine._

"Well—eh, married to Scarlett, can you blame me?" he said, with a careful mixture of self-deprecation and blasé candor. "Especially being husband number three. Ms. Melly was Scarlett's best friend, so of course I knew I never had cause for envy on that account. What kind of woman would have designs on her best friend's husband?"

He could see her vigorously repressing the guilt from across the room.

"What kind indeed?" Julia Ashley said, gravely. The clock struck the hour and jolted everyone in the room in equal measures—it was seven o'clock.

"Look at the time!"

"Well, Eleanor, Scarlett, Rhett, we really must be going along—you have dinner coming and we're detaining you." Sally and Ms. Ashley rose from their seats, to shake each one's hand in turn. Scarlett gave them both a last girlish curtsey.

"You'll have to bring your pretty young wife to the Ashley Plantation for dinner one night this week, Rhett," The old battleaxe practically ordered, giving Scarlett one last scrutinizing look before exiting with a merry, waving Sally Brewton.

"What do you think?" ask the former, quickly, as they were walking to the carriage.

"Difficult to say," was the snappy answer. "First I thought she was insipid as all else, but as soon as Rhett came in the room…well, it didn't take long in his presence for her to stop fawning over him," she pointed out, wryly. "Her eyes are veritably tiger-like."

"There's something going on between them—he's been very tightlipped about it, and because of everything that's happened to him this last year…" The unspoken words, 'because of his little girl', lingered for a second or two. "I didn't press him—and then all those letters started coming."

"Does it seem odd," her companion posed, "that the wife should come on the _exact_ day he's set to meet that man? I mean, considering that she's been in Atlanta for months," Ms. Julia shrewdly observed.

"It is a rather strange coincidence…"

"Scarlett…Scarlett…" she repeated, thoughtfully, as they drove away, "What was her maiden name again, Sally?" she called to the front of the rig. "Something Irish, wasn't it?"

Before Sally and Julia, amateur sleuths, were halfway to the carriage, Rhett had 'excused' he and Scarlett from the parlor and practically dragged her up the narrow staircase and into his bedroom. And no, not with the same intentions as he had _that_ night.

Slamming the door shut, he spun around to face the catlike waif.

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?" he bellowed, all pretense of calm defenestrated long ago.

"God's _nightgown_," she twisted her hand out of his grip, fiercely, "Will you keep your voice down? Your mother is downstairs," she hissed.

"You're lucky I didn't make a scene downstairs in front of those women, you—"

He stopped short, abruptly noticing the half empty cream and chestnut trunk on the left side of his bed and the gaudy, brightly colored gowns strewn haphazardly all over. An unforeseen dilemma that should have been evident was now inhabiting his masculine den of refuge and cluttering it up with feminine frippery and the body he had spent over a decade memorizing and then trying to forget. Had he a talent for art, he could probably paint a nude of Scarlett from memory, every feminine contour, from the flat plain of her stomach and small waist to the curve of her…

"No. You're not sleeping here."

Best to throw cold water over _that._

"You can sleep in a guest room," he continued, firmly.

"But why should I, when there's a perfectly good side of a bed right here?" she shot back, crossly, overlooking the panicky note in his voice. "Besides, what excuse would you give to your mother for my sleeping in a guest room?"

"Maybe I could tell her I'm out of practice sharing a bed," her husband answered the question, glibly.

"Well, that wouldn't exactly be the truth, now would it?" was her acid response, as she picked up the gowns that had been so carelessly strewn everywhere, one-by-one. He stood there, watching her do it, plotting his next move. Killing her would be difficult—where would he hide the body?

It was so strange to see her here, in his mother's house. Really, she was taking her rightful place by law at his side, and far more actively than he'd ever done. Attempts to worm his way into her life were careful, methodical, and, above all, stealthy—Scarlett, conversely, had all the secretiveness of a club-footed elephant.

Or at least he _thought_ she did, before all of this. She never ceased to surprise…as she fastidiously smoothed and folded her gowns (familiar dresses, too—how odd! Where were the new ones?), he wondered what agenda his little minx had brought to the city of his birth.

"Scarlett," he said, finally, seeing no further point in skirting around the issue, "What do you want?"

She piled the dresses on top of her trunk, turning around to face him, hesitantly. She bit her lip nervously. Scarlett sat down on the end of the bed and pointed at his desk chair, gesturing that he should sit. He settled into it, puzzled.

"What I want," she said, voice faltering a tad, "What I want is—I want you to…to come back to Atlanta and give our marriage another chance." She managed to blurt it out. Rhett gave her no visible reaction, his face the usual smooth blank.

"And you thought this would be a good incentive for me returning?" he drawled, a hint of danger in his tone. "Making me a laughingstock?"

"I don't see how's any different from letting the woman you supposedly love try to sell herself to you for no reason but sport," was her stinging reply. Immediately Scarlett seemed to regret saying it, for she turned crimson with shame. "I'm sorry, Rhett—I shouldn't be…"

"Shouldn't be what?"

"Shouldn't be…trying to hurt you." Her voice was quieter, calmer—warmer. "Listen, I've been doing a lot of—a lot of thinking since you left." She looked directly into his eyes, her own clear and bright—in spite of stumbling over the words. "You were right about a lot of things—about the way I treated you, and well—I know I've made a big mess of our lives. I want to make things right."

Such a child. Always such a _child_. She thought enough confidence and determination and 'I'm sorrys' could make it right—when nothing could.

"Scarlett," he said, hollowly, before she could tell him more of her regrets, "I don't love you anymore." He wanted to nip her false hopes in the bud, to rouse her anger, anything to stop this stubborn creature in front of him—for her resigned calm and outward strength were blinding proof of a maturity he never thought she'd have.

"I know," she answered, sadly. This was a surprise. Rhett Butler expected her to deny that his love could have ever died, to plead with him, beg—as she'd done so many nights ago in Atlanta. But he could scarcely compare that woman with the collected and composed female before him now. "I'm not asking for it—yet. I just want a chance."

"And if I refuse?"

The softly glowing, humble visage before him transformed smoothly into one of hard steel.

"Than Lars Cotheart shall strike again." There was neither a hint of warmth nor a suggestion of exaggeration in the words. Apparently his calculating side had rubbed off on her over the years—this was pure, unadulterated blackmail.

There was no point in civility.

"I'll cut off your money," he threatened, ratcheting up his own iron will. "I'll stop sending money for the Peachtree house."

"It makes no difference to me—I have my own money," was her cool reply. "And I can make more. As you've always said, money _is_ the only thing my thick Irish brain can understand."

"I don't have to stay here." He was desperate now, grasping at straws. "There are other cities."

"With other newspapers and other busybodies," she countered.

"You underestimate the forward-thinking people of Europe. You won't be able to come up with something bad enough to get me banned in France. Paris is not the South."

"Perhaps, but I think you're far too proud to give up on Charleston _that_ easily," she reasoned. "If you just come home to Atlanta—"

"I have no intention of coming back to Atlanta!" he snapped. Instead of returning his anger, she blinked once and gave a maddeningly agreeable nod.

"Fine. Then I'll send for Ella and Wade and we'll all stay here."

"If you think you're staying in Charleston—"

"What are you going to do, throw me out on the street?" she growled, no longer playing it sweet. "If you do, you will have insulted Lars Cotheart's honor, and he'll have no choice but to call you out."

"_What?_"

"I'll have no choice but to duel you."

"You're not serious," he murmured, faintly. He could see some comic representation of the event in his head—her with a dueling pistol in one hand and a parasol in the other. When Pitty heard about it, she'd probably simply drop dead.

"Does it seem like the sort of thing I'd _joke_ about?" It really didn't. "Of course, you've got too much of the Southern gentleman in you to shoot at a woman, so I'm not worried."

"Maybe you should be," he countered, acerbically. "Society only dictates I not shoot at _ladies._" She ignored the insult.

"I can take the gamble."

Rhett sighed. Physically, emotionally…hell, probably even spiritually he'd run the gauntlet today. And this was only the first day. Not seeing what else he could do, he simply laughed. _God_, this woman.

She of the poor sense of humor did not seem to find their fight to be laughable. After the out-and-out war they'd fought the last decade, this current conflict's sheer absurdity was more obvious to him—perhaps hindsight would provide her with the perspective necessary to appreciate this momentous, comic occasion?

"Well then, my dear," he chuckled, his near hysterical laughter subsiding, "It seems we're at an _impasse_." If a day ago someone had told him he'd be facing the prospect of dueling his own wife he'd have called the man a drunken fool.

"What's an _impasse_?"

"It's…a stalemate. A deadlock." He didn't have the energy to make fun of her ignorance now, so instead he just explained. "You want me to go and I won't, I want you to go and you won't. We're stuck, my pet."

"It's the story of our lives, isn't it?" Apparently the humor wasn't totally lost on her. Scarlett fiddled nervously with the edge of his blue silk coverlet, the sight of which made him audibly sigh—how could she manage to look so guilty and innocent at the same time?

"I've been stuck in some capacity or other since I met you, yes," he admitted, grudgingly. "I was just starting to enjoy my freedom again, too." The wounded party gave her an accusatory stare, to which she grimaced back.

"You've always come and gone whenever you wanted, _I _never had any bearing on your movements, as far as I can tell," she said, bristling defensively at the accusation that she might have held him back.

_Not knowingly, you didn't._

He pulled out a cigar to fill up the familiar, customary ritual between them—the awkward silence after a quarrel. For once, though, Scarlett didn't seem to be fuming. She was as thoughtful as he was.

She broke the silence first.

"Listen, Rhett, you know I haven't the patience or time for these sort of things." Her voice was brisk, businesslike. Not the voice of a woman trying to get something out of the fool she'd married—this voice negotiated lumber sales. "I have a proposition that will settle this awful quick."

"What sort of proposition?" he asked, not bothering to remove the cigar from his mouth. He was feeling her out, real casual—this was going to be rich, whatever it was.

"Well, you and I, we're the competitive sort, aren't we, _darling_?" she drawled, eyes dancing hungrily, voice brimming with repressed excitement. "I thought you might go for a contest—I counted on you being your usual stubborn self, of course, so I came up with it as a tiebreaker in case we had one of those impasse things."

"A contest?" he queried. What was she driving at, exactly?

"Winner takes all, to settle our little problem." Scarlett gave him a positively dangerous, devil-may-care smile. This alone caused him to sit up in his chair, more alert. "If _I_ win, you'll come back to Atlanta with me and we'll give being married another chance."

"And what, precisely, would that entail?" Rhett wondered what a woman of Scarlett's unique emotional ignorance would think 'giving a marriage a chance' would consist of. She'd only ever thought of marriage in terms of what she could get from it, he wagered—would giving 'marriage' a chance mean bowing to her every whim?

_I've already done that, with little success._

The thoughtful, if unsure answer was so completely out of character he found himself staring with profound wonder.

"We'd—we'll talk, for once. Really talk, honestly, like equals—like a grown man and woman. About what's gone wrong between us, and we'll try to forgive." Her eyes went misty, and she quickly blinked it away, hoping desperately that he didn't notice. He did. "Ourselves and each other. That's what normal married people do. And you'll live at the house, and be a stepfather for the children…I'm not asking for your love, yet," she spoke, honestly. "Only time. I want the chance to prove to you how much I care." She looked down in her lap in shame. "I know I never gave _you_ that chance, so it's more than I have the right to ask..."

This was worse than the greedy demands of love he'd been expecting. Far worse. This was torture. This was a trap, meant to lure him into a false sense of security until it was too late, and he was under her spell again, at her mercy…that's when this repentant wife façade would dissolve and the cruel man-eater would drive him to madness once more…

"And should I win this little competition, what do I get?" He abruptly brought the conversation back to business, which didn't seem to perturb or bother her at all.

In fact, she was more surprised his interest was peaked.

"I'll do anything you want," was her frank, concise answer to the question. He nearly choked on his cigar.

"Anything?" Rhett repeated, aghast that she would make such an outrageous promise. "_Anything?"_

"Well," she amended. "Anything short of breaking the law or doing harm to my children. But yes, most anything."

"You'll leave Charleston?"

"Yes."

"Stop sending letters? Stop writing my mother?"

"Yes."

How serious was she?

"You'll—sign divorce papers?"

Something flickered in her eyes, some pure emotion, before it died an instant later.

"Yes, but _that_ will be the last thing I do." She adjusted her frock, demurely, flicking of an invisible piece of dust. "This deal only lasts while we're married. Divorce me, and I can do as I like again."

"Well, how do I know you won't start causing trouble again, as soon as the ink's dry on the paperwork?" he scorned. "Forgive me my skepticism, I speak from past experience."

"I'll keep the promises I made while we were married." She gave him her 'staring down the barrel of a gun' face and stuck out her square jaw stubbornly. She was so totally Gerald O'Hara in that moment, what could he do but keep humoring her?

"And what kind of contest did you have in mind, Mrs. Butler?" Rhett leaned back in his chair, as if he were the president of a company hearing a particularly entertaining sales pitch.

"One that only a fool would refuse." She smiled like a shark. "A _gentleman's_ contest. Three competitions—best two out of three."

"What are the three events, pray tell?"

"Why, what else but what men are good at?" she said, charmingly. "Shooting, cards and horses."

"…Shooting, cards and horses?" he echoed, disbelievingly.

"I said it was a gentleman's contest, didn't I?" He sat there, his cigar hanging limply from his hand, in danger of burning his fingers, while he processed this information. "It only makes sense—whoever can shoot straightest, bluff the best, and ride the fastest wins. Just call me 'Lars'."

"Scarlett," Rhett started, using the voice someone would use to explain a very simple arithmetic problem to an equally simple child, "You realize I'm easily the best shot east of the Rockies, don't you?"

"I've heard something of it. Never actually seen you shoot something, though—how do I know you haven't been lying to me all these years? God knows you have about everything else."

"I once made a _living _gambling professionally on a riverboat." _And you couldn't bluff your way out of a paper bag_.

"The girls at Lafayette said I was quite the Whist player."

"When was the last time you even _rode_ a horse?"

He'd been riding them since he was old enough to get in the saddle—but then, Scarlett probably had too, growing up in the country. She'd learned to ride as a child, and was doubtless pretty good at it—he'd seen her ride only a few times, since they lived in the city. Of the three proposed competitions, horseback riding was the only one she had even the remotest chance of winning.

And that was still a snowball's chance in hell. He had her—if this was a real offer, he _had _her.

"Now, say I agree to this, Scarlett. When I win, as I inevitably will, how do I know you won't go back on your word?" Annoyance at his arrogance combined with self-righteous indignation filled her up and boiled her blood—how _dare_ he make such an allegation, her green eyes told him. "I've seen what happens when Scarlett O'Hara gambles big and loses—something usually gets thrown. I find it hard to believe you'll leave without making _some_ fuss."

"I swear on the immortal soul of my mother, Ellen Robillard O'Hara, that I will keep my word," she vowed, without preamble. He knew she meant it. For all her rejection of religious dogma, Scarlett O'Hara wouldn't invoke such an oath if she didn't mean to keep it. "Is that good enough for you, or should I swear on my father's as well?"

He nodded, grimly.

"You'll never beat me with a gun, a deck or a horse, Scarlett," he warned.

"Then you have no reason to refuse, Rhett." Rarely was he so impressed by her courage, her foolhardy, thoughtless, brainless courage—he was so impressed that with each passing second her ridiculous sport was becoming more enticing and he was being drawn more and more into her game—and her web. Dimly, he was aware of this—but like a man watching an oncoming tidal wave, he was powerless to stop it and simply watched, entranced, as it destroyed everything in its path.

"You won't even make it past round two." He could already feel the heady rush of victory—but really, the challenge would be the best part, in the end. Seeing through her tricks, her plans, her schemes, and revealing her for the fraud she was—it was his favorite sport, bar none. It had been since the day he met her.

"We'll see. A woman in love is capable of extraordinary things, you know." She gave him a pert, challenging look, one they both knew he couldn't refuse, and rose from the bed. Offering one slender, dainty hand, she made the motion to seal the wager. "So, do we have a deal, Captain Butler?"

He hesitated for only a split second, the shred of good judgment he still possessed screeching things like, "You've been here before," "Don't do this," and "What are you, some kind of an idiot?" He ignored this good judgment because when it came to her, he always had.

He grasped the hand and they both felt a tingling rush of something…a spark, one that delighted her and disconcerted him. Still, it didn't stop him from grinning and saying,

"We have a deal, Mrs. Butler."

The last bit of good judgment (let's call it, say, Geoffrey) screamed in exquisite agony before dying a slow and painful death. In a small corner of Rhett Butler's soul, there is a memorial to it, with this inscription, "Here lies Geoffrey, Rhett K. Butler's last bit of good judgment. He lived a good, if not productive, life."

Rhett was too busy raking his eyes over his scheming bride to notice—of course, he rationalized that this path was just the quickest way to be rid of Scarlett, and a series of mildly farcical, competitive challenges was in no way some bizarre form of sexual foreplay. Then he remembered that he was still holding her hand and had begun to absent-mindedly caress her palm—he let go, abruptly. She pouted a little, but was obviously pleased with their arrangement—a deal he was very curious about the inception of.

"You know, Scarlett, this plan isn't at all your usual style." The whole thing was far too creative for her linear brain. "Where in God's name did you come up with it?" He was genuinely curious.

The manic pleasure that challenging him had always given her faded from Scarlett, and she looked mildly embarrassed.

"Well, it's rather silly—"

"Now I'm even more intrigued!" he mocked.

She gave him an annoyed look and sauntered away, turning her back to needlessly adjust the pillows on his bed—_their _bed.

"If you must know, I got the idea from Wade," she ultimately admitted.

"From _Wade_?" He doubted Wade, for all the lad's braininess, would think that _this_ was the best way to secure his stepfather's presence in Atlanta. But Scarlett quickly clarified that her son had not become some sort of evil mastermind.

"Yes, do you remember that book of English stories that Ashley and Melanie gave him for his birthday? Well, a few months ago he and Ella kept prattling on about one of them, Robin Hood, about some silly robber who goes about stealing from the rich, or something—" Rhett instantly saw the answer and cut her off mid-mediocre summary.

"You mean to tell me," He was incredulous, "That you got this whole competition idea from the archery contest in 'Robin Hood'?" Who could forget the famous scene in the legend when the titular hero comes, in disguise, to win the title of 'Best Archer in England' and a golden arrow to be handed to him by his lady-love? It was among his favorite boyhood stories. He had to laugh at something so ludicrous planting this idea in Scarlett's unromantic brain. "You are a most _gallant_ suitor—of course, I think Maid Marian might have been a tad more receptive to her knight errant. _She_ wasn't competing against Robin Hood for the pleasure of never seeing him again."

She gave him a dirty look before turned her attentions back to the gowns.

"Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, Rhett Butler, we'll see how 'receptive' you are after tomorrow, when I've won," she said, carelessly. Her brazen confidence was like no one's he'd ever met—how sure she was, how refreshingly sure. She was completely wrong to be, but it still amused him to see her dismiss his superiority. "Now, help me pick something out to wear to dinner, will you? I'm simply famished!"

"Maybe something green would suit, given the circumstances?" he observed, wryly. "Or should I start calling you 'Will Scarlett'?"

She simply threw a dress at him, irritably.

**And now the real chaos begins. For some reason when I got my prompt, the mental image of Scarlett challenging her husband to a contest for 'his hand', in essence, was the first thing that popped into my head. Any bets on the winner? **


	4. The Scarlett Pimpernel

**8/24: Well, here it is, a month coming. I guess I probably won't be finishing my ficathon entry by the time the deadline passes—things just got too crazy, and I'm going off to school a week from today. Accept my apologies and a really, really long chapter—I was going to be a review whore and post it in two parts, but I decided to be nice. Thanks for the help, Bugsie!**

Rhett put off going to bed as late as possible—so much so that it was after one o'clock by the time he crept into the former den of solitude. The cream-colored curtains fluttered in the soft spring breeze that blew through the window, allowing a sliver of moonbeam to fall on the bed.

Scarlett had fallen asleep—quite against her will, if the low-burning lamp at her bedside table was any indication. He moved across the room with the stealth acquired from years of sneaking around for some nefarious purpose or another—silently, until he was right above his 'Sleeping Beauty'.

She wore a nightdress of deep purple and deeper neckline, clearly designed for the purpose of seduction. Scarlett had meant to tempt him tonight, Rhett thought, and for that he should have been angry—watching her in her sleep, as she snored gently, murmuring soft, unintelligible gibberish, her mouth hanging open in a decidedly unladylike fashion, though, he could only feel affection and fondness. In slumberous daze she was her most vulnerable, the vivacious, coquettish innocent again—the girl she was when she first entranced him.

He let his eyes drink in her face hungrily, without worry about controlling his emotions, he simply let himself feel them as he observed her roll over and shiver.

"Mmh…Rhett…" she cooed in her sleep, clearly cold from falling asleep above the covers. He swiftly pulled a blanket over her, taking almost tender care not to awaken the deceptively angelic looking creature, and he was painfully reminded of Bonnie.

She rolled over again, throwing the blanket off her chest and exposing the smooth expanse of ivory flesh from her collarbone to the edge of where the skimpy negligee started.

Any innocence sleep might have given her was expelled from Rhett's mind the second he got an eyeful of her still magnificently preserved figure. He pulled away from the bed at once, withdrew, and bit his lip in a rare display of open frustration.

God, how easy it would be to wake her up right now and remove her remaining, scant garments…A painfully familiar tightening in his lower regions occurred at the sight of her, half-clad, pouting lips parted in an indolent, slumberous smile.

_Thank God she'll be gone this time tomorrow…there's only so much of this I can take._

Her very presence in this house was arousing to him, her indignant rages and juvenile insults giving a flush to her cheeks and firing her up in a way that made Rhett want to do terribly indecent things to Scarlett just to make her shut up. Rhett stared pensively out the window, unsettled by the light breathing he could hear behind him, disturbing his solemn tomb.

Scarlett was doubly a temptation because it had been so long since he was with _anyone_.

He was a man who liked to take what he wanted, when he wanted—the one exception to this was probably his wife, and even _Scarlett_ had fallen prey to his insatiable desire for control on more than one occasion. The delights of the flesh were no exception to this rule, and when he first returned to Charleston he made a steady stream of visits to the local bordello. Every night he went he spent with a different girl, trying to purge himself of all things Scarlett—her body, her hair, her eyes.

A woman was a woman, though, and at the end of the night he found some amount of physical satisfaction with these ladies of the evening, if not great peace of mind.

All of that changed in November, though, when the first Lars Cotheart letter arrived.

Being under such intense scrutiny in his South Carolina hometown made visits to a brothel…difficult. He really was under a magnifying glass here in Charleston, and he could not put his beloved mamma 'through the mill'—he did not want his connections to that particular trade exacerbated. He knew men who visited these places and these same men had wives they talked to: wives who were friends of Rosemary's and Mrs. Butler's. For the sake of discretion, his visits to the bawdy house dropped off significantly before the holidays. Instead he spent evenings in open, public places, 'respectable' saloons where he played cards with Randolph and other men of his cousin's ilk.

When more letters came, he stopped visiting the places altogether.

It had, as of tonight, been exactly two and a half months since he'd been with a woman.

Had he ever, in his entire adult life, gone this long without a woman? And now there was a woman in his bed—not just any woman, _the_ woman.

_The_ woman who, in addition to, (a) being present, and (b) being in his bed, (c) wanted him as badly as he wanted her.

He could freely admit that his desire for the woman residing in his chamber had never changed. This was about lust, not love—he was a man of strong sexual appetites and always had been. As proud of his virility as the man was, he did wonder why over the years his libido had not dropped as other men's did. His sexual desires and needs had only increased after he married the woman he had coveted for what felt like a century. Rhett wanted to take her everywhere and in every way—he half-seriously suggested that they 'christen' all the rooms in their Atlanta mansion, to which she merely replied, 'Oh, do be serious for once, would you? One of the rooms is a nursery.'

_Why is there no one who can compare to her? _he thought.

The next morning Rhett woke later than usual, unable to find a comfortable position in his cramped sleeping space. He groggily dragged his feet into the kitchen where his younger sister was reading a newspaper and his mother was bustling about.

"Morning, Rosemary, Mamma," he yawned, wildly.

"Good morning." Rosemary barely glanced up at him from her newspaper.

"Good morning, Rhett. You know, you might not be so tired if you hadn't fallen asleep on the library sofa." His mother gave him a cross frown. "What on earth possessed you? Mazie says she found you this morning still _dressed_."

The sofa itself was the least of the reasons for his unrest the night before.

"Well, I was up late reading and I didn't want to disturb Scarlett when I came in—" he remarked, casually. "Speaking of which, where is the younger Mrs. Butler? Still asleep, or is she—?"

"She left with Sally Brewton," Rosemary cut him off, absently, pouring over the print still. "Over an hour ago."

"With _Sally_?"

"Yes, Sally came to the house quite early this morning—she must've really hit it off with Scarlett, because she said she just had to see her again. So off they went together—your wife is getting a private tour of Charleston, from what I understand—the two of them _intended_ on waiting for you, but since you slept in so late they finally got fed up and left." Mrs. Butler gave him a mildly admonishing look, which he ignored, instead focusing his considerable intellect on more pressing quandaries—e.g., where the hell the alliterative pair had gone off to together, and for what nefarious purpose?

He was too confused to respond to his mother's words, at least at first. Scarlett and—_Sally? _What could his old friend possibly have to say to his wife that was so important—in only a day and one conversation, had Sally really become so taken with her? Of course, one look was all it had taken with him…the idea that she was already enmeshing herself in his Charleston life, forging connections with his loved ones, bothered him.

As he was having that thought, Sally Brewton herself came through the door of the kitchen, much in a hurry and quite unannounced.

"I'm sorry for the rude interruption, Eleanor—oh, good, Rhett, you're up—_finally_." She emphasized the last word as if she was annoyed, but the unladylike, cheeky grin she shot him suggested he not take it to heart. She gave Rosemary and Mrs. Butler the necessary polite 'hellos' and nods.

"That's alright, Sally, you know you're welcome here any time—but where's Scarlett?" She peered around the younger woman, as if her daughter-in-law was hiding somewhere on the other side of Sally. Rhett carefully watched Sally's face, but to his annoyance, she was far better at masking her true intentions than his wife was.

_Hell, even Scarlett's getting better at that._

"She's—" Sally stopped herself from completing the sentence she had planned on saying quickly, to which Rhett's senses were attune to immediately. "She—sent me to get Rhett."

"Oh, and where exactly are we going?" he asked, not without some humor, as he leaned back comfortably in the chair across from his sister and chewed carelessly on an English muffin—he suspected where they were going was not a place she was going to tell him freely in front of his mother.

"Don't you like surprises, Rhett?" she asked, sweetly. He frowned.

"Depends on who's being surprised," he replied, warily. "Today, Scarlett and I were planning on doing our own—" _special, sadistic dance _"—private tour of Charleston, I'm planning on showing her all my old haunts, so you can understand my concern about you—distracting her from my plans."

"Now, Rhett, you'll have plenty of time for all that," his mother cut in, cheerily. "I spent breakfast with Scarlett convincing her to give up this silly notion of hers to go back to Atlanta so soon—she should send for her children and they should all stay for an extended visit, don't you think?"

He was surprised his scheming little bride had not latched onto his mother's desire to stay—but no, whether Scarlett won or lost their contest, she must realize she would be back on a train to Atlanta in either case. If she wanted to buy herself more time to win him back, she easily could have. As usual, Scarlett had picked the most direct, blunt path to victory—and boxed herself in in the process.

Mrs. Butler excused herself from the room, informing them that she had mountains of letters to write that were piling up, and would Sally please amuse herself with the Butler children while she left the room? Sally heartily agreed, and so Mrs. Butler left the three young-ish people to their own devices.

Rhett's eyes met Sally's, and he half-expected her to open her mouth and admit to everything, his sister's presence be damned. To his surprise, she ignored him and turned her attention to his bookish sister Rosemary, still reading her paper.

"Tell me, Rosemary, what's going on in the world today?"

"Just Governor Moses, spending money again…I'm only reading _this_ since I have nothing better."

"I just brought you some more books, didn't I?" Rhett said, testily. "Sally, I—"

"Can you guess what Julia and I were discussing just recently?" Sally interrupted. "Newspapers. More specifically, how we found them to be generally drab, dry affairs. We both agree they could use some spicing up."

"How?" Rosemary asked. Sally's eyes glinted malevolently in Rhett's direction.

"Oh, I don't know—maybe some sort of puzzle, either with numbers—or letters." Her smile became even more toothy. "An anagram puzzle, even—just yesterday Julia Ashley was telling how absolutely great she was at figuring out anagrams." Rhett blanched in horror. "Apparently they were all the rage when she was at school—the girls had contests to see who could make the most phrases out of their name."

"Is that so?" Rosemary said, politely, probably finding the subject of Julia Ashley's girlhood activities as interesting as the governor's behavior. The trips down memory lane were for her brother's sake, not hers, so it was just as well. Sally had her 'cat that swallowed the canary' look on—she knew. _She knew._

"How many anagrams are there for 'I told you so', d'you think, Rhett?" she turned to him, sweetly, no doubt referring to her long-held belief that Rhett could never find peace in love.

"I don't know, how many are there for 'I take your meaning, I'll go get my pistol'?" he said, blandly.

"That's awfully long, Rhett."

"What on earth do you need your gun for, Rhett?" Rosemary exclaimed, finally listening to the conversation that had hitherto been soaring like a bird over her head. She physically moved her head, looking between her brother and Sally, the latter of which was using all of her God-given self-control to keep a straight face.

"I'll tell you when you get married, Rosie," he answered, cryptically. "Tell mother to expect us back by dinner."

With that he swept out the door and up the door to collect his finest dueling pistols. He and Sally had hardly gotten out of the door of the Battery House before she burst into peals of laughter.

Rhett, for his part, failed to see the humor.

"Alright—" he growled, over her chortles. "What do you know?"

"Lord, I know I've never seen anything as funny as your face when that girl came in the door last night—" She wiped a tear from one bright blue eye. "—But hearing what she had to say this morning was a close second."

"Which was…?" They both walked briskly to his carriage, nimble, quick-footed folks that they were.

"Well, a whole lot of things, I guess." She was enjoying yanking his chain, that was for certain. "Where on earth did you pick that girl _up_, Rhett? I simply must get one of my own."

"You couldn't afford the upkeep, Sally, believe me," he shot back, churlishly. "Does Julia Ashley really know?"

"I wasn't lying about her being an ace at word puzzles." He groaned in near physical pain. "Now you might satisfy my curiosity on the point of my last query, since I'm giving you a ride."

"I told you last night where I met her," he exclaimed, impatiently, as they trotted down the cobbled street. "At a plantation party in 1861. What more do you want?"

She stared disbelievingly at him.

"I now know, straight from the horse's mouth, that your mysterious wife has in fact been trying to tarnish your good name for months behind your back—I guess she's been doing it because you left her (when were you planning on telling your mother about that, by the way?), and now she's come to Charleston to win you back in some spirited, medieval contest." She laid all the facts out as if this was a highly usual state of events. "Given _that_, is it any wonder I want to hear the real story of how you met?"

"She threw a vase at me," he said, shortly. "Where the _hell_ are we going?" They had entered the industrial district, full of factories and so unfashionable he could not picture Scarlett setting foot in it.

"To a jousting tournament—don't you have some Arthurian challenge to win?"

Sally explained that she came by earlier that day to discreetly confirm the theory that she and Ms. Ashley concocted the previous evening. At first his wife vehemently denied it (so much so that she gave herself away completely), but Sally assured the scared-out-of her wits girl that the news was found by the women far more entertaining as a secret than as common knowledge. Long story short, the perennially bad liar Scarlett was worn down by Sally's charms. In the privacy of the interior parlor, once assured that Sally was happily married, Scarlett admitted close to everything—Rhett's desertion, her plan to win him back, the letters, the contest. Rhett chocked up the unusual trust between the two women to Scarlett being so emotionally wound up—otherwise, she would have never shown so many vulnerabilities to a near stranger.

As they drove to wherever Scarlett was, Sally spoke of her reaction to the earlier conversation.

"It's not too often you'll meet a woman who'll literally fight for the man she loves," Sally, said, honest admiration apparent.

"Scarlett has a penchant for lost causes, same as all Southerners, I suppose," Rhett said, bleakly. Sally gave him a sad smile.

"If it's really not meant to work out between you two, I hope, for your sake, that you win—frankly, I think you were a fool to agree to it in the first place." The carriage came to a grinding stop in front of—curiouser and curiouser—what appeared to be an abandoned munitions warehouse.

"If you don't approve, why'd you drive me out here?" Rhett asked, as he stepped out of the carriage, his heart rate already quickening at the prospect of crossing swords with his errant wife.

"Just because I think you're a fool doesn't mean I don't find your foolishness mighty entertaining." Sally jumped down, _sans_ Rhett's proffered hand, and tied the carriage to a street lamp. "Besides, I told Scarlett I'd be the judge."

As soon as they entered the building, Rhett realized that he was correct in his cursory assessment of it—it was, in fact, a warehouse. Or an abandoned warehouse, if the emptiness of it was any indication. The walls were crumbling in many places, and the ceiling dripped a substance that, at one time must've been water, but had since become something that people on the Oregon trail had probably gotten dysentery from. There was also an odd smell lingering in the air, mixed in with burnt gunpowder odor—cured meats? Several large crates were pushed up against the wall, and on the far side of the gallery a number of round red and black targets stood.

"Here we are, Rhett." Sally raised her arms in deference. "It's ours till noon."

He whistled appreciatively.

"How long has she been _planning_ this?" he asked out loud, walking over to the line of targets with the intent of examining them closer. "She can't have done this all yesterday—but I also can't see her going to all this trouble unless she was sure I'd accept," he called over his shoulder to his friend.

"I was sure you would—you always pick the easiest way out," a voice from behind him said.

This time he did not jump out of his skin when he heard Scarlett—but when he turned his head to look at his wife his eyes involuntarily widened.

"What the hell," he asked, slowly, "are you wearing?"

She gave him a gracious smile.

"You can't say I tried to distract you with my feminine wiles this way."

She was dressed from head to foot in modified men's clothing. In place of a corset and bodice was a white silk shirt that hugged her torso snugly, a petite version of one of his own green brocade vests covering it—in fact he would venture a guess that she had filched the fabric from him. Instead of her usual long, flowing and many-layered voluminous skirts and petticoats she wore a pair of tan leather trousers, which tapered down into sturdy looking black boots. Around her slim waist a holster was slung, and he could see a brand new US Army-issue Colt Single Action .45 was hanging from it—smaller than regular issue, clearly designed for a woman.

If the getup was actually meant to distract from her essential woman-ness, it was failing spectacularly. The shirt and breeches clung to her frame like grape vines to a wall. To top off her ensemble, Scarlett wore one of the wide-brimmed panama hats that he had left in their home the previous autumn. Her hair was braided and the end of the plait tucked smartly underneath her hat.

Sally laughed in delight.

"Lord, child—when you said you had to get dressed for the occasion, I had no idea this was what you meant." Scarlett strode over to her, gait as delicately feminine as ever, a sight which nearly made her husband guffaw aloud. "Turn around and let me see."

Rhett couldn't help but notice, when his wife spun to give Sally the full effect, how indecently the rough-hewn leather trousers clung to her backside. In fact, he had never seen her in a dress that so clearly accentuated her shape as the clothing she wore now. It made sense, of course—such an outfit was specially made, quite probably in Europe, scandalous and shocking as it was.

It didn't make her look like a man, that was for certain.

The shirt wasn't as low cut as many of her evening gowns, but Scarlett had such ample bosom that she didn't need a corset for _that_ particular area to stand out.

_She knows she looks good,_ he thought, as Scarlett flashed him one of her few self-aware looks before leaving Sally and ambling over to him, her raised boot heels clicking on the cement floor. _It's the only thing she ever knows for certain._

"Well, what do you think?"

"I—" He let his eyes insolently rake over her figure, taking care to appear more amused than aroused. "I hope you can imitate a man's talents as well as you can don his wardrobe."

Her sweet expression, donned for the purpose of fishing for compliments, turned into a sullen pout quite rapidly.

"Would complimenting straight for once kill you?" she growled, pushing past him to no particular destination but out of his immediate proximity. He bared his teeth in a smile—in the loosest sense of the word.

"It's not in my nature, my pet," he said to her back. From the way her shoulders were hunched, it was obvious her arms were crossed. "Though I must admit, I don't like it as much as that little number you were wearing last night. Some of the garments you pick for yourself defy reason--"

"I didn't know you came in the room last night, Rhett," Scarlett interrupted, voice at once silky with self-satisfaction. She spun around so rapidly it was as if she was an overly keen policeman, and he the escaped convict, stupidly returning to the scene of a first major heist. Which was not a bad analogy for their situation, truth be told. Silently, he cursed himself for letting her see that chink in his armor.

Outwardly, he was as unflappable as ever.

"I like to take a gander at the goods before I reject them," he stabbed, cruelly, intending to deflect from her brief and fleeting truisms. As soon as the words were uttered, he braced himself for a deserved venomous retort—but to his great surprise she said nothing at all. Scarlett's eyes flashed in transitory, fleeting pain, but otherwise she remained uncharacteristically in control of herself—though her brow furrowed in anger and she could do nothing to keep her nostrils from flaring.

"And here I thought you slept on the sofa because you weren't sure you'd be able to control yourself in a bed with me," she finally said, just as Sally walked over. "You certainly couldn't the last time we shared one."

"Now remember, you two, firearms are only for the purpose of the contest," was Sally's gay warning as she joined them, giving Rhett no chance to respond to the deadly accurate blow he'd just received.

"Who said any different?" Scarlett said, breezily, as she brushed past them both and stepped up to one of the distinctive red lines drawn on the floor. There were a series of them running parallel to each other, spaced exactly five feet apart and situated in front of but some distance away from the target. The line that Scarlett toed was closest to the big crimson and black spheres, and she immediately put her hands on her hips in impatience. One booted foot tapped the chalk line rhythmically. The coy and flirtish façade she had always tried and failed to sell him on was discarded in favor of the demeanor of a steely competitor.

"Only I heard the tale end of your conversating, honey, and it sounded like you both might try using them prematurely," Sally dryly observed, to which Scarlett rudely huffed and turned her back on them both. "Lord, but she does have a temper, doesn't she?" She ducked her head and asked Rhett, in an undertone. Rhett watched Scarlett try and crane her neck back and eavesdrop on their conversation without actually turning around—he found it difficult not to laugh at her almost falling backwards trying to discreetly lean towards them.

There was something sad, ridiculous and yet strangely endearing about her. It faintly amazed him that he still noticed her charming quality of girlish absurdity after everything that she'd done to him. God knew her 'charm' had worn long ago for most people who knew her.

"Just like you have a gift for understatement," he answered, eyes still trained on the 'Leaning Tower of Georgia', who had to wave her arms ungracefully to remain upright when she was knocked off balance by Sally's laughter. She twisted her head to glare hotly at the two companions with undisguised envy. Rhett's eyes locked onto his wife's in challenge, and the stare down crackled with the combined force of competition, spite, and an underlying current of sexual tension—all of which Sally noted with the avid interest of a composite opera patron and tennis devotee.

"She may have a temper," Sally observed, wryly. "But I never saw a woman get under your skin so easily." His intense concentration broken, he shifted it from one woman to another without batting an eyelash. "I understand now why you married her—it must've driven you plumb crazy to see her with another man."

"That's all water under the bridge now," he said, brusquely, annoyed at how quickly she had guessed the truth. "I wouldn't waste your time analyzing it—soon enough she'll be out of Charleston and your life." _And mine_, he added silently.

"Whatever you say, Rhett…" she said, skeptically. Rhett was focused back on Scarlett and barely registered the incredulous tone of voice.

"We don't have all day, Mrs. Brewton—I would very much appreciate it if you would explain the rules rather than help Rhett stall for time." Scarlett had gone from impatient to down right rude in the space of about six seconds—the woman who she addressed remained unfazed by it.

"Alright, honey, I'll speed things up—and I told you to call me 'Sally'!" She herded Rhett next to his wife on the line. "Once you offer to judge some hair brained contest between a man and his wife you're automatically on first-name basis with everyone."

The joke was lost on Scarlett, who merely nodded politely but did not answer.

"So, Sally, explain exactly how this is going to work." The targets and red lines were self-explanatory, but the format of the contest was as of yet unclear to him.

"Well, Scarlett told me she thought it'd be fair for me to come up with the actual rules."

"That way he can't claim I doctored them to my advantage," she said, pointedly avoiding his roving eyes.

"How very _sporting_ of you, my dear," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Sally ignored their interruptions and continued.

"Now, from what I gathered, this is a contest to see who's the best shot." She tromped over the gritty cement floor to one of the targets, her charges finally paying somewhat respectful attention. "You'll each have fifty shots, ten shots on each of those five lines—so the first ten will be on the 30 feet line, eleven through twenty will be on the 35 foot line, and so on and so forth," She bent over gracefully and picked up one of the ringed targets with apparent ease. "Each ring, including the bull's eye, is allocated a numerical value—the closer to the center, the higher the number. With each step backwards the value will increase—obviously a good shot is worth more from the 50 foot line than the 30."

"And how does one win?" Scarlett asked.

"After 50 shots each, whoever has the highest composite score wins."

Rhett frowned—the whole thing sounded needlessly complicated to him, but Scarlett was not the one who'd come up with it, so he could not fault _her_ for it. He was beginning to suspect that Sally had come up with this form of contest because it would prolong her entertainment. For the rest of his life, he was fairly certain, he would never be able to live this whole sorry affair down—and Sally would be the first in the line of people reminding him of it.

"And should we have a tie after fifty shots—what then?" Scarlett asked, logically. "For example, what would we do if Rhett and I both hit the bull's eye on all one-hundred shots?"

"Sounds rather unlikely, if you ask me."

Scarlett's face gave the impression that she had never, at any point in this exchange, had any _intention _of "asking him".

"Well, yes, a man of forty-six holding a gun steady for that long _is_ a bit far-fetched," she returned, icily, sending copious amounts of ill-will in his direction with her eyes. "I was merely presenting an illustrative example."

Wisely, he kept his mouth shut.

"In the event of a tie," Sally carried on, in an attempt to diffuse the moment—futile but noble. "We'll go to sudden death—shot for shot, until one of you shoots worse."

They both nodded, and later Sally would describe the scene to Julia Ashley as "the most eerie thing a body ever saw—I've never seen a married couple wear the exact same face at the exact same time. A pair so cut from the same cloth shouldn't be allowed—they make the rest of us looking positively drab."

"The rules clear enough for you?" Scarlett turned to him, cocking her head in a challenging but not unfriendly way. As angry as he could plainly see she was at him, she was also oddly pleasant—she even flashed him one of her trademarked, dimpled smiles. This was probably due to her remarkable dual abilities of being able to hold onto a grudge until the backside of forever on the one hand, and discarding/ignoring things, letting them roll off her back as if they didn't matter one jot on the other.

"The game is simple enough, even if the venue is rather…peculiar." Rhett glanced round the empty warehouse, at once struck by the immense strangeness of a man of his fortune spending a morning with his cross-dressing wife in a run-down depot that could collapse in on them at any moment.

"I apologize for that—it's not exactly ideal, but it suits our purposes quite nicely, and it came at a very good price," the always money-conscious nodded, sagely, as a large drop of moldering plaster fell mere inches to the right of her head.

"I'm sure it was very inexpensive," Rhett said, humorously, before the thought struck him. "Exactly how much is this costing you, anyway?"

"How is it any of your damn business? Besides, you always said questions about money were ill-mannered—"

"If the money in question was mine to begin with, the rule doesn't exactly apply," he interrupted smoothly. "I believe it's well within my rights to know where what I send you goes."

She gave him a hard, searching look, as if trying to parse his true motivations for asking the question. She would find herself sorely disappointed, though, for he himself did not know what they were.

"Well, put one way: I won't be remodeling the house in Atlanta any time soon," she acceded, finally. "Wade will still be able to attend the University of Georgia, put another way."

"He _wants _to go to Harvard," Rhett corrected, gently. "And if you're embarrassed by the exact sum and don't want to admit to it, fine." Her reluctance to confess peaked his interest—any cause worthy enough to part her from her golden coffers had to be a weighty one. The cause this time was…unprecedented in the history of their relationship…_him_.

If she knew just how much money he had thrown into the goal of winning her over the years, she would have no reason to be embarrassed…from the wedding and honeymoon, to the house of horrors, to even the money he'd lost by lingering in an inland city like Atlanta rather than sticking to the coasts during his blockading days, it was a veritable fortune he'd spent on her, one way or another.

It was yet another concrete reminder of just how obsessed with her he'd really been.

"Shall we start this party, or do you two need a few warm-up shots first?" Sally interrupted his muddled musings.

"I'm ready," Scarlett said, with absolute certainty, as she pulled her (his?) hat down firmly on her brow. "I warmed up before you both came."

Rhett said nothing. The idea of "warming up" for a shooting contest with the petite brunette beside him hadn't even crossed his usually wily mind.

"Better to get this over with, Sally—let's start."

"Alright, then." She crossed to the side of the drab structure's largest room, where a large chalkboard with 'SB' and 'RB' written at the top stood. "Fire when ready—I don't care who goes first."

Rhett bowed to her, mockingly.

"Women and children first, my love," he said, condescendingly. Her answer was a grim and courteous curtsy.

"I believe protocol would suggest that the challenged takes the first shot." She raised one eyebrow coolly. "By all means, _do_, Rhett—I don't mind playing second fiddle to you or anyone."

_Well, well. Is that sarcasm intentional or unintentional, I wonder?_

"Suits me fine." He pulled one of the fine ivory pistols out of his holster with a show-offy flourish, a familiar jolt of self-aware power at handling such a weapon shocking his senses. He heard her breath catch in her throat as he held the gun up, aimed, and with almost inhuman self-confidence pulled the trigger—

_CRACK_

The smoke blew away from his face more dramatically than even he could have hoped for, to reveal the result he had, in his arrogant smugness, expected.

The bullet was lodged as precisely in the bull's-eye as it could be.

He turned to her, pleased with himself, by reflex expecting her feline eyes to be alight with glowing admiration, just as they always had been in the past when he was the best waltzer of any men in the room, or drove up to Pittypat Hamilton's with the finest, newest carriage in Atlanta—any time he proved his mettle to Scarlett, her open face would gaze with a frank approval that shot his pulse through the roof.

When she was not sporting such a look, he was annoyed with how disappointed he was. Instead her green eyes searched, giving him a calculating appraisal, the wheels in her head turning, in a way that indicated she was working out the odds of winning more than anything else.

It was at that moment, when she so clearly analyzing his form detachedly rather than cooing over his manliness, that he realized she was _playing for keeps. _For some reason the usually intelligent man had fooled himself into thinking the whole contest was just a ruse—sport to fluff his ego, an appetizer to Scarlett's main course _dejure_—heavy-handed seduction.

Taking the contest seriously was never part of the equation.

Until she fixed him with her own devil-may-care, steely stare and he remembered words, his own, from years ago…

"_I've seen eyes like yours above a dueling pistol twenty paces from me and they aren't a pleasant sight."_

The full impact of what was said hit him like a proverbial bullet.

"That's a mighty fine shot, Captain Butler." She drew her own weapon and cocked it with a surety that startled him. "Allow me." And without another word or glance she aimed the military gun and shot into the target next to his.

_CRACK_

The target mirrored his perfectly—she had managed to hit smack dab in the middle of the black dot as well.

"Holy smokes!" exclaimed their judge, as she quickly ran over to inspect the lodged bullets more closely. "You two could become a pair of married outlaws if you wanted to!"

"Where the _hell_ did you learn to shoot like that?" She wanted him to ask the question, that was obvious—it was as plain as the nose on her face.

"Ask me again when I've proved it wasn't dumb luck," she said, seriously, eyes boring into his in a way that made him feel transparent—a wholly unfamiliar sensation.

They both shot again. It wasn't dumb luck.

Two perfect shots in a row. Rhett didn't know precisely _how _to react—except that a reaction in and of itself was probably what Scarlett wanted, so the best reaction would be a…non-reaction.

Or something.

"I have to repeat my earlier query—where the _hell _did you learn to shoot like that?"

_CRACK_

"For years you built it up like it was the hardest thing in the world—but I know better now. Once you know how to hold the thing, it's really only a matter of _doing_ it."

_CRACK_

"Mrs. Butler, I do believe you are avoiding my question—you needn't bother. I'll get it out of you. You are holding that gun like a Union sharpshooter, not like a woman, who, to the best of my knowledge has only ever operated a firearm one previous time in her life."

_CRACK_

"Maybe the best of your knowledge isn't that great, did that ever occur to you?"

_CRACK_

"I know surprising me is a quaint novelty for you, Scarlett, but spare me your coy misdirection. I'm simply interested in how and, more specifically, from _whom_ you learned."

_CRACK_

"Does my girlish country flirting make you uncomfortable, Rhett? I'll keep that in mind for the future."

_CRACK_

"It's quite plain you're itching to tell me. I'll wager you never kept a secret for more than ten minutes your whole life."

_CRACK_

"The way you talk about it, you'd think telling the truth was a crime. I've tried your way of things the last few months, and I don't care much for falsehood, truth be told."

_CRACK_

"Then why bother? Pardon me, I have to reload."

"You drove me to it."

"Subterfuge is the least of what you've driven me to over the years."

"So all the lying about the way you felt—it's all my fault? You won't take any responsibility for it—at—at all?"

_CRACK_

"…I said all I needed to the night I—the night Miss Melly died."

"Fine. You've said everything you ever needed to say to me. You looked like—never mind. I guess my underdeveloped imagination must have been acting up again."

_CRACK_

"There you go again! Your talents once again prove to extend far beyond the usual well-bred woman's realm. The mystery consumes me."

"What can I say, Rhett? I'm a natural. Some talents just aren't cultivated."

_CRACK_

"And shooting isn't one of them."

"I can't help it if twasn't a natural talent of _yours_."

"Why are you afraid to tell me?"

_CRACK_

"Why are you so damn intent on knowing?"

"Pure scientific interest. You are a woman of intense extremes. I'm interested in what degree of extreme you'd take in securing the foolhardy goal of continuing our marriage."

_CRACK_

"I do declare, you know how to make a girl blush! Little ol' me, worthy of examination by the great Captain Rhett Butler!"

"Too bad your newfound skills in sarcasm don't extend to an aptitude for recognizing it in others."

_CRACK_

"…"

"Nothing pithy?"

"I'm sorry, I was just mistaken is all. God knows it's happened before. Now I'm disappointed."

_CRACK_

"How so?"

"I thought that you had noticed that to learn marksmanship I would have had to be alone with a man for hours on end, and you were jealous. Of course you hadn't, though—since you don't care about me anymore. Pardon me my presumption—obviously who _he_ is doesn't really matter."

_CRACK_

Sally Brewton could scarcely keep her jaw from dropping to the floor. The fearsome pair had just fired off 20 perfect, straight in the middle, bull's eye, 'one in a million' shots—all the while simultaneously carrying on what appeared from her unique vantage point to be a far more sinister duel—a war of words.

_Those two are something else—have they been fighting like cats and dogs the whole time they've known each other?_ she thought, in wonderment. _Julia Ashley, not even you'll believe this._

Meanwhile, Oberon and Titania, the warring lovers, had turned their attention more fully to each other, now that the round was complete.

"'He'?" Rhett repeated, voice more strident than he cared for it to be. "So you admit you have been having lessons—from a man?"

"Yes." She smoothed a non-existent crease in her heavy trousers. "Aren't you going to compliment my form?" Scarlett changed the subject, brightly, as if she knew for a fact that there was no bigger treat for a man than being given the chance to lavish her with praise. In fact, some experts theorize that Scarlett O'Hara actually believed this to be true.

If it was, Rhett Butler would be the last man whom it was true for.

"Right after you tell me who it was."

She sighed, impatiently, as if he was a troublesome beaux and not a husband asking his wife perfectly reasonable questions. Sally was currently marveling at the bullets embedded in the wall behind the targets, so their contest was at a temporary standstill. Scarlett lifted her arms above her head and stretched them, lacing her fingers together and cracking her knuckles unabashedly.

"Have you heard of a Yankee by the name of Ambrose Burnside?"

Temporary surprise prevented him from coming up with a cleverer answer than the truth.

"The general? Of course I've heard of him."

Burnside was a Union General, one who had been defeated at the Battle of Fredricksburg but before that lead successful campaigns in North Carolina and Tennessee. He was not a particularly good general, in fact, Ulyless S. Grant was quoted as saying he was 'unfit' to lead soldiers—but he was popular personally, while displaying a certain lack of originality militarily speaking. Indeed, Burnside's facial hair was more distinguished than his endeavors in the army—he would one day be lauded as the man for whom sideburns were named.

"Well, he was in Atlanta a few months back and I happened to meet him," she said. "Being a Yankee of course, no respectable folks would see him…so he ended up over at Casey Moore's house."

"Well, Casey would hardly fall under the category of 'respectable'."

Casey Moore was a man with ties to both the railroad and coal industries, and a former business associate of Rhett's—he was from Boston, a criminal offense by Atlantan standards. He'd known and done business with the Charlestonian blackguard for years, which was far more telling of his character than the geographic location from whence he'd come.

"Well, you were the one who introduced me to him, you'd know best," she said, guilelessly. "Anyway, I'd stopped over at his place to ask a business question."

"_I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Jones, I know I haven't called in a long while."_

"_Mrs. Butler—Scarlett—call me Casey, we've known each other long enough for that. It's quite alright, Scarlett—in fact, it's better than alright, it's downright fortuitous."_

"_Pardon?"_

"_Allow me to introduce General Ambrose Burnside—Mrs. Scarlett Butler."_

"_Delighted, madam."_

"_Charmed, I'm sure. Whose side were you a general for?"_

"_Ha! That's why I'm glad you could meet Scarlett, General. Such a sense of humor—at a party, once, at the Butler's house, I remember her shocking us all with her long held belief that the Confederacy should have surrendered after Fort Sumter."_

"_A view I've heard very often up North, madam, but never from a Southern woman."_

"_When nearly every man you grew up with doesn't come home from a war that was lost anyway, you start to not see the sense in it, General."_

"_I'm sorry to hear of your losses—I saw many a promising young man lost myself. Nothing can compare to it."_

"_My husband served in the Confederate army, of course. And he attended West Point."_

_Burnside showed particular interest in this piece of information, being a military mind himself. He was a blustering, affable fellow, with what Scarlett viewed as repulsive growths of hair attached to the sides of his face. She only chatted with him and humored the uninteresting Union patriot because she needed to speak to Casey, and couldn't see any way around the small talk with his much-favored, corpulent guest._

_The topic turned from her husband's patchy military training and career (always an embarrassing subject) to the state of the army _en large_. That led to the disinterested Scarlett learning the information that had facilitated the very contest they were engaged in at this moment._

"_Marksmanship training was abominable in the North before the War—half my men couldn't shoot a gun straight before I got 'em."_

"_Sounds simply dreadful, General."_

"_Scarlett, you haven't heard about the NRA, have you? Ambrose here is the president of it!"_

"_I don't suppose I have, no."_

"'_President' is just a figurehead title, of course, Mrs. Butler—they wanted someone with a bigger name than mine heading their organization."_

"_And what do the initials stand for, precisely?"_

"_The National Rifle Association, ma'am—I wouldn't expect you to have heard of us, we're a fledgling society. Just started in '71, by some Bostonians and soldiers—Col. William Church and Gen. George Wingate, friends of Corey's—that's how we met. The whole thing's a bid to turn shooting a gun into a real art, and train the young men of this country up. I was brought on board because I make a good figurehead—they really wanted the President."_

"_Mrs. Butler's husband would no doubt be very interested in your work, Ambrose—Rhett Butler's widely known to be the best marksman south of the Mason-Dixon Line."_

"_At the risk of raising wifely admiration—really, Mrs. Butler?"_

"_He once told me he could drill a dime at thirty paces—but I'm not sure if he wasn't making fun of me at the time. And that was years ago—tell me, General Ambrose, about this little club of yours and its…work. I'm simply _in awe._"_

"_Well, we just opened up a range on Long Island, New York, by the name of Creedmoor, and we're starting shooting matches there…"_

"And well, I expressed my personal fears for myself, being a woman whose husband travels often. And the rest you see before you."

Slowly, deliberately, he lowered his gun and placed it back in the holster around his waist. Then he turned full body to stare her in the eye directly.

"You actually got the president of the National Rifle Association to teach you how to properly wield a gun?" He said this with the reluctance one has in repeating gibberish. "That's what this amounts to?"

"Well, he was only in Atlanta for so long—he gave me the first couple of lessons. One of his associates, a colonel, took over for the advanced training." She gave him the cross, cheated expression of one who feels that they have been given false information—in this, about the noble art of marksmanship. "Not that there's much 'advanced' about it, once you learn to hold the thing—"

She was cut off by his laughter—an unbelieving yet totally unsurprised laugh lacking all affectation. It was the laugh of a man who knows he has no one to blame for his current predicament but himself. The expression, "you've made your own bed, now you've got to lie in it", came to mind—only in his case, it was more like, "You've married her, now you're got to keep her locked up or she'll wreck havoc in a single-minded path of destruction with you as the target."

"What's so funny?" she said, in the shrewish voice of one addressing a repeat offender of the crime of mockery.

"You—you never do anything half-way, do you, Scarlett?" Rhett chortled, helplessly, and Scarlett could not help but soften a little in the face of just how absurd their situation was. "Was Ulysses S. Grant too busy or something?"

"As if I'd want _him_ to teach me," she snapped. "It's bad enough having to learn from _any_ Yankee…"

Scarlett trailed off when she saw his face. Apparently, his last question had been rhetorical.

Instead, she turned back to their targets, and the contest went on.

And on.

And _on._

It was around bullet 30 that Rhett realized, with stinging clarity, what Scarlett's strategy was. It should have been obvious, but his own pride in his mastery of the gun had blinded him.

It was a question of _stamina._

Scarlett was not a better shot than him (though she had natural enough aptitude that she might one day be), but that didn't matter. What mattered was that she had obviously been practicing and shooting and _holding_ a gun every day for the last five months, and he, respectable sod that he was, had barely picked up his pistols in the last three years. This was information he guessed his gorgeous, shrewd wife, for all her ineptitude and reading him, knew well.

It takes strength to shoot a gun straight many times in quick succession—the recoil is wicked on an arm after only 10 shots, never mind fifty. Where she was lacking in skill, she made up in the raw strength of someone who has been _training._ He'd been too busy wallowing in the drink to bother keeping in shape, and endurance was one of the many things he was still building back up.

From the way Sally was smiling lazily, he guessed she knew the disadvantage she was giving him when she set the contest up to be this long.

Around the third line, both of their performances' cracks began to show—in Scarlett's case, it was inexperience, but in Rhett's it was the physical and mental strain. They were no longer shooting perfectly.

In this situation, Scarlett's problem was going to end up being less of a handicap than his. Which meant, as was the usual case with his wife, that he was going to have to revert to his old standby: fighting dirty.

All of this was going through his head while he was firing a gun and carrying on witty repartee with her. Sometimes he amazed himself—by virtue of pure idiocy, of course.

_CRACK_

_Shit. The second ring again…it's a damned stationary target—I used to be able to shoot living, moving things—what the hell happened to that—?_

"Rhett?" she interrupted his inner musings, innocently. It was probably a good thing, because he was about to realize that his skills with a gun had diminished from years of shooting people at close range and _from behind._ "Do you picture something when you're shooting the target?"

_Doesn't sound like half a bad idea._

"Not all of us were trained by a General, my pet," he gritted his teeth as she effortlessly raised her own gun and—

_CRACK_

—Shot better than he had in the previous round.

"But you went to West Point—surely they taught you there." She casually blew the smoke from her pistol and reached into the fashionable little pouch hanging from her neck for more ammunition.

This was true: he _had_ technically learned at military school. Where he'd _really _learned was from experience, though: out in the field. Barroom brawls, claimjumping, gunrunning, whore mongering, and the like. Trying to explain 'out in the field' to his wife would be a waste of energy—she was one of those people who saw things purely through the eyes of their own experiences, and the only 'fields' in Scarlett's contained cotton, corn, and on special occasions, turnips.

"There's a reason I was expelled, Scarlett." He clenched his jaw in concentration. This brief time to contemplate had given him his footing back.

_CRACK_

Another great shot. If he _really _focused he could do this enough times to win.

"Do you want to know what _I_ picture?"

"Few things in life would give me more pleasure," he said, not surprised that the sarcasm went unnoticed. Being taken at face value by her was one of life's reliable consistencies.

"What I picture," she pressed on, relentlessly. "Is a man in a navy-blue uniform."

_CRACK_

She tilted her head demurely.

"Just a Yankee soldier? Nothing else?"

"Well, he has black hair and a mustache," she said, nastily, the words not just an insult, but also one meant to be ground mercilessly in his face. He laughed just as nastily, telling himself that the deep and familiar tightening in his chest wasn't caused by her deliberate ploy to hurt him. He almost believed himself, too.

"Well, if there's anyone who's justified in wanting me shot dead, it's you," he said, blackly. "Let _me _try your little technique."

A pair of intensely expressive almond-shaped eyes swam in front of the target this time.

_CRACK_

"I just wonder who you were picturing," she said, glaring at the bullet he nailed into the back of the wall through the center of the target.

"I barely had to exercise my imagination at all," he smirked. Her shoulders tensed in preparation for his punch line. "Since the original was so close at hand."

Rhett had not, up until this point in his colorful existence, ever seen an enraged bull elephant. If he had, at this moment he would be able to compare it to his wife and honestly say that the pachyderm was the one coming up short on the anger scale. He grinned smugly out of habit.

When she bullseyed her next two rounds, his grin drooped.

It seemed that, rather than flustering her into screwing up, his insults only bolstered her courage and her skills. This was unfortunate, as since there was not a 'no talking' rule, they both took to trying to distract each other with petty taunts and shy insults.

He was a far better insulter than she was—he _knew_ people, backwards and forwards, and over the years had cultivated a deadly talent of using what he knew against them (when they were least expecting it, of course). She, on the other hand, was completely thick-headed about most people, him especially—she only ever 'got' at anyone by sheer dumb luck. In short, while he could wield words like a deadly rapier, she employed them clumsily, as she would by swinging a large club.

Today she was 'channeling' her anger—instead of responding to his increasingly nastier and nastier jeers by turning on him, she bottled up her rage and funneled the energy into the barrel of her gun—with much success. He could practically hear the words in her mind, repeated over and over again—_The center of the target is Rhett…just imagine it's him…the closer to the center you are, the more satisfying it will be to see his face when you win._

His comments before each shot might actually be _improving_ her performance, come to think of it.

By the time the last round rolled around, Scarlett was beating him by a small margin. The margin didn't matter, though—she wasn't showing signs of slowing down, and she only needed to win by one point.

"I can practically hear the whistle of that train back to Atlanta now, Rhett," she said, with confidence, as she prepared to take the second shot of the last round. She was brimming with confidence now, as he'd mucked up his last shot and she hadn't. His mouth was a straight line.

_CRACK_

_The first ring again. She's doing too well this late in the game. I either have to shoot the way I could fifteen years ago or—_

A thought, the kind of idea and brain synthesis that could mean the stars and planets are aligning at that moment, struck him. It was an evil, unscrupulous and _dangerous_ thought. A 'last resort' thought, the kind he might feel guilty for, except he was employing it against Scarlett—so he didn't.

"What exactly did you picture our life being—should you win—when we return to Atlanta, Scarlett?" he probed, casually, taking a completely different tact than his previous barbed remarks—he was smooth, charming: almost disconcertingly so.

"What do you mean?" She was temporarily caught off guard by his abrupt turn-around.

"I'm curious what you envisioned for certain _aspects _of our relationship." His face was as innocent as a cherub's as he aimed.

_CRACK_

"Good shot, Rhett!" Sally complimented. Scarlett scowled in counterpoint.

"What 'certain aspects' are you talking about? I find your beating around the bush particularly vexing." As she raised her arm, a meticulous timer ticked away in his head…3…2…finger on trigger…

"The bedroom arrangement, for example."

_CRACK_

The involuntary twitch in her hand had not escaped him, nor had the all-too-quick way she turned her head after the shot—her ivory, shell-shaped ears had colored coral pink the second he spoke, quite involuntarily.

"Why on earth would you bring something like _that_ up?" she squawked, her now visible face still flushed. He shrugged.

"I was simply curious to hear what you imagined we'd be doing—excuse me, where we'd be sleeping." There was a lightness in his timbre that would have given the impression to an out-of-earshot observer he was talking about the most benign of subjects. "It doesn't—_bother _you, does it?"

_CRACK_

"Certainly not. Well—I mean, it's hardly a proper subject to talk about in public."

"Does this count as 'public'? We're entirely alone, except for Sally, who can't hear us."

"Yes, well…when we're done here we could discuss it to your heart's content. But, as it is, I have to—"

"Concentrate on what you're doing? Of course my dear, of course."

_CRACK_

"Well done. If I'd known my talking was bothering you and impairing your abilities, I would have stopped. You needed only to ask."

"You aren't 'impairing' me one bit, Rhett!"

"Oh, of _course_ I'm not. You would have learned to shoot in all conditions, being a skilled markswoman. My mistake."

_CRACK_

"Even when your husband is speaking to you about marital relations."

"_Rhett!_"

"What?"

"You shouldn't—it's not—I mean—Mrs. Brewton is _right over there_!"

"So? She can't hear me. Would you prefer if I spoke in a lower voice, like this?"

"I would prefer it if you held your tongue about it, actually."

_CRACK_

"Now, why should it matter to you so much? Clearly it's a subject that's on your mind, if your attire last night is any indication."

"I'm sure I don't know to what you're referring."

"Oh? Then am I to ascertain that you did not attempt to seduce me by wearing a nightgown many religious orders would assume was 'hell spun'?"

"It was _French_."

"It was a manner of speaking, Scarlett."

_CRACK_

"Hmfh. You're doing better."

"I believe in common parlance it's called, 'getting one's second wind'."

"I'm sure."

"No doubt yours will come along soon, as well."

_CRACK_

"Your second wind, I mean."

"I _understand_ what you were referring to."

"Good. Now, about this nightdress business…"

"Don't you need to reload your gun?"

"I like taking my time. Surely what goes on between a man and his wife, nay, a man and a _woman_ can't bother you, Scarlett, if you were planning on seducing me. You must remember what happens after the pretty dresses, eye batting and coy glances."

"You're loading it like someone puts a ship in a bottle."

"If you, as you say, want me back as your husband—your 'lord and master', forgive the expression—you must want me back in _that_ way as well."

_CRACK_

"What did you think would happen last night, I wonder? That I would come in the room and see you there, lying on top of the bed, and become quite overwhelmed?"

"…I—I—"

"That I would lie down next to you and run my hands over your exposed skin? That I would kiss your, upturned, pouting lips (still in such desperate need of attention), just to see if they were as soft as I remembered…and find that they were?"

"I thought no such thing!"

"I expect that you believed after kissing you once, I wouldn't be able to stop. That one kiss would lead to another, and another, until finally I'd get so caught up in it, and you, that my hand would find that convenient clasp the Parisians put on the bosom of your little violet creation and undo it, and I would push it down past your shoulders and over your—"

_CRACK_

"Stop it. Just stop it. Not everyone's mind is as filthy as yours is."

"Filthy? But surely if you love me, such thoughts are of the purest and highest nature."

"What do you even know about—pure things, anyway? You're probably never had a pure thought or feeling since the day I met you."

"Being such a morally pure being yourself, you're more fit to judge than I."

_CRACK_

"…In your mind's eye, tell me, Mrs. Butler—do I remove my garments or do you?"

"You're vile, you're wretched—you're the scum of the earth!"

"And you're quite red. Are you feeling alright? From the hue of your cheek, one would think we were sitting in a furnace."

"I know what you're doing, don't think I don't see what you're trying to do, Rhett Butler!"

"Right now, I am trying to prolong the absolutely delightful rosy tint you are currently sporting—it puts one in mind of raspberry crème. I think I'm meeting with success."

"Shut up! That's not what I meant and you know it. You're trying to…to fluster me, throw me off with your barbaric remarks, because you know there's no other way for you to win, but it won't work!"

_CRACK_

"'It won't work'? My dear, you've missed your mark by quite a bit the last three rounds. I would argue it's working exceptionally well."

"In case you haven't noticed, you aren't doing so well yourself, Rhett Butler—your arm is tired. I can _tell._ You're so arrogant you took it for granted you'd be able to beat me without trying or practicing."

_CRACK_

"Hm. Perhaps you're right. When I first met you, a shot at this distance would have been easy. It's a real pity that senses dull just when we start to need them."

"And what exactly do you need them for?"

"You can't imagine why a man would curse his diminishing sense of taste and touch when his quite passionate wife is throwing herself at him?"

_CRACK_

With some verbal maneuverings that impressed even him, the man had managed to utilize a long-abandoned weapon—his own sexual potency—to turn his near defeat into a near…tie.

"One turn left, you two!" Sally said. "And the score stands at 485 to 480, Scarlett Butler in the lead—hold your fire." She trotted over to them like a bemused sheepdog with her two most rambunctious lambs. "You've certainly put on quite the show—you ready to close it out?"

"Completely ready," Scarlett said, not looking Rhett in the eye, pointedly.

"As ready as I ever am," he followed, ironically.

"Here we go, then." Sally returned to her place on the sidelines. "Fire when ready!"

He pulled the weapon out of its leather nook on his belt, reverently. This was it.

_When this is all over, I'm going to start practicing again,_ he thought. _You never know when you're going to need to embed lead into something._

"Come on now, Captain Butler," Scarlett purred, beside him. "We're all dying of suspense."

He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes, careful to let them rest on her for only a split second. Tendrils of her dark hair had fallen out of the neat plait and had fallen inelegantly over her eyes—eyes that were watching him with a feverish, expectant intensity from under the oversized hat she was still wearing, ridiculously. She was not wishing failure on him.

Her gaze was concentrated, fervent—even admiring. The porcelain oval had no trace of malice painted on it; her face was still red from the embarrassment of the implications he'd made about the previous night. It was the face he'd wanted to see forty-nine shots earlier. The face of the woman who wanted to beat him into submission and dance on his corpse had been replaced by the face of a very different female. She thought he was the best in the world, could do nothing wrong…

It was the face of the woman who was in love with him. His wife's face. _Scarlett's_ face.

Black and White, Good and Evil, Love and Hate—there is a duality in all things, including Rhett and Scarlett. On the one hand, she wanted to beat him and humiliate him—but she wanted to beat him because it was a chance at getting him back. And because he had hurt her. The duality of human nature might actually be more pronounced in the Butlers than in other people.

For example, at that moment there were two Rhetts: the one that wanted nothing but to shoot the center of the target fifty feet away, and the one that wanted nothing but to take Scarlett home and make passionate love to her until they were both incapable of moving anymore.

In this case, he harnessed the desire of one Rhett to attain the goal of the other.

_If I make this shot, that's exactly what I'll do, damn the consequences._

_CRACK_

He had always been able to make an exit with style—today was no exception.

"Wo-hee, Rhett—if you'd been in the Confederate Army from the beginning we might have stood a chance!" Sally changed the scoreboard to 495 to 480, with 'RB' now beating 'SB'.

"That was a real…real fine shot," Scarlett said, breathlessly. Putting his gun away with one hand and massaging his arm with the other, he contemplated his chances in overtime. They were not good.

_If she matches my last shot, she'll win outright. If she makes it in the first ring, she'll tie me and we'll go into sudden death._

He clenched his trembling hand into a fist. It was useless, he knew he had no more ace in the hole shots left in him. The same thing had obviously occurred to her.

"Since we can all do simple math here, I'll take it we can all draw the same conclusions," Sally said, wryly, leaning against her scoreboard. She didn't care for being a judge much—especially of a battle such as this, one where she couldn't even begin to grasp the intricacies of the conflict. It was like learning about the War of the Roses in school. "Fire when ready, Scarlett."

A last, desperate plan began to take shape in his mind—he had no time for finesse. It would have to be quick and dirty.

"You know, I like those clothes on you," he said quietly, as she pulled out her own weapon for the finale. If it could be said that he was channeling the teasing Rhett of the War to fluster her before, it could now be said that he was about to channel a man from a much darker time—the time in their relationship he was the most ashamed of.

"Do you?" she asked, lightly, prolonging the moment of truth by fiddling with the hair in her face self-consciously.

"Yes," he murmured, dangerously. "It allows me very clear view of the shape of your body—far more detail than any dress."

As far as insults go, it was not one of his best. Scarlett let out the breath she'd been holding in, slowly, and raised her gun to aim. He opened his mouth.

It was now or never.

"Yet another of your many similarities to Belle Watling comes to light."

In the next second, several things happened at once.

At his callous, cruel words, her tightly coiled temper finally snapped—just as he'd intended. She cried out in rage, twisted around and struck him with as much strength as she could muster. Temporarily losing her wits, in her incensed anger she dropped the gun on the ground—or rather, threw it on the ground.

It went off. The bullet ricocheted off a cinderblock in the corner and into the southeast wall of the building.

"You _bastard!_" Angry tears welled up and spilled over—but whether it was anger at him or herself, who could say? "Why the hell did you marry me, then, if you think I'm no better than her?" she yelled, furiously, before pushing past him fiercely and running to the back entrance to the warehouse. The door slammed shut behind her.

In the ensuing silence, a _drip, drip, drip _of moldy water echoed in the almost cavernous warehouse. Sally awkwardly approached Rhett, still staring at the door she'd run out of (by this time Scarlett was sobbing uncontrollably three blocks away).

"Well, that's—one way to end things."

"Yes," he spoke, suddenly. "It is."

He felt as though he was waking up from the last hour, as if it'd all been an incredibly surreal dream…or nightmare. The weight of the world seemed especially heavy on his shoulders, in spite of his victory.

For some reason, he felt very, very old.

"What did you say to her?"

"I said—" he found that he did not have the strength or energy to lie. "I compared her to the madam of a whorehouse in Atlanta." The ugly truth lingered in the air like a bad smell between them—Sally's usually warm brown eyes turned icy cold.

"Well, congrats on winning," she said, dispassionately. "_Fair and square_."

Briskly and in silence, he helped her collect the remnants from the large room—empty shells and targets and the board.

"You're lucky," Sally broke the silence, finally. "If my husband had said that to me when I was holding a gun, he wouldn't still be alive."

**Google image search 'Ambrose Burnside' and imagine Scarlett O'Hara talking to him. It will make your day.**


	5. A Sort of Calm

**9/14: Not quite as long as the last one, I realize. I hope you'll forgive me.**

He declined the stiffly proffered ride home from Sally in favor of walking home. It is a pat saying that 'the fresh air does you good', but that is because it is true. He needed the fresh air.

It was bright out, now, and clear—the cheerful weather was mocking him. Rhett thought it ought to be as gloomy and downtrodden as he felt. The streaming sunlight and light breeze stood in contrast to the storm cloud that surrounded his entire being. He scowled at two boys playing ball in the street, and one of them was bold enough to stick out his tongue before scampering away. He desperately wanted a drink to counteract the anxious, nagging feelings tugging away at his wane conscience. The entire trudge back home he bitterly leashed the compulsion, knowing full well that the habit would not be intelligent to pick up again so soon after he had rid himself of it.

By the time he morosely wandered back to his house, it was close to five in the afternoon. He pushed open the door of the house half-heartedly. Mrs. Eleanor Butler he found embroidering the cover of a kneeler-cushion for her church in the sitting room, deep in concentration.

"Mother…?" he ventured, poking his head through the door.

"Rhett?" She looked up in surprise. "I didn't think you'd be back for at least another hour or so."

"Why?" he asked, quizzically, stepping into the room.

"Well, Rosemary said not to expect you until supper, and then Scarlett said you were doing some business downtown and—"

"Scarlett's here?" he interrupted, quickly. His mother stopped her gabbling long enough to look mildly surprised.

"Why, yes, of course she is—she came back around three. I thought _you_ dropped her off, Rhett—" In one stern look, his remaining parent seemed to channel the deceased one. "You didn't leave her to take the carriage all alone, did you?"

"No, of course not." _I have absolutely no idea how she got back here. I merely upset her into a state of near hysteria until she literally fled from the building._ "Sally and she were going to do some more touring," he lied rather lamely before pressing on. "Where is she now?"

"The poor dear said she had a headache, so she went upstairs to lie down."

"Thank you."

As he mounted the stairs, his heart sank a little further in dread with every step on the creaking, sagging walnut. The door loomed above the landing like a harbinger of doom. Tentatively he knocked on it.

"Scarlett?" he hesitated. "Are you in there, are—are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Rhett—come in," a muffled but otherwise normal-sounding voice replied from the other side of the door. He opened it, still cautious, and guiltily sidled into the room that had been only a day before exclusively his.

Scarlett was sitting at the vanity his mother had placed in the room for her use, brushing her hair slowly and methodically. In the reflection in the mirror, he could see she had a distracted, far-off look in her eyes—very contemplative, especially for her. Her eyes bore only the faintest traces of the tears he expected.

"I thought you were sleeping," he said, irrelevantly, lingering in the doorframe. It was a mark of his discomfort that he was reluctant to cross the threshold.

"I was, until a few minutes ago," she replied, calmly, not ceasing her brush strokes. "I heard you come in right after I woke up."

"Oh."

There was an agonizingly awkward, pregnant pause. After thinking about this moment for the last four hours he had no eloquent speech in mind—no glib joke to disarm her.

"Scarlett…I'm sorry," he cut through the silence, finally. "What I said to you was…it was cruel. Deliberately so. And I didn't mean it. I just wanted…"

Rhett didn't say what it was he had 'wanted'. He didn't need to. She closed her eyes and sighed, heavily—a most unexpected reaction from his end. Her next words were a surprise to her husband as well.

"Rhett, I _know_ that."

She turned around in her seat to look him square in the eye.

"I knew you didn't mean it when you said it. I'm no fool, as much of one as I've made myself the last few years—I knew. I know you only said it because you were sure my temper would—I would react that way. What you _wanted_ was for me to blow that last shot," she seethed—but not, Rhett recognized, with anger at him. "And it worked. If I'd held myself together for just a second longer I would have won." Her voiced hardened with self-reproach. "I have no one to blame but myself."

He was bowled over by this of all responses: to have her blame _herself _for what had happened was too much for his conscience to bear.

"For God's sake, Scarlett—listen to yourself!" His voice rose more than one decibel with incredulity. "That's absurd. In essence I _cheated_."

"There was nothing in the rules that said you couldn't say something. I forced you into this contest, I know what to expect from you—I know to expect you to fight as dirty as I would in the same circumstances." She bit her lip and lowered her gaze to the carpet, boring a hole in it with her eyes. "I let your words have power," she hissed. "I _always_ let your words have power over me, I have ever since we first met. I guess it's because you've always known just what to say to hurt me the most. Now that I know—" her voice caught in her throat. "Now that I know how I feel about you, it's worse than ever."

"Scarlett…"

She looked so lost and so vulnerable, the urge to cross the room came over him like splash of cold and familiar water.

"I envy you, do you know that, Rhett?" she said, abruptly, before he could act on his impulse. "I envy your ability to conceal what you're thinking—what you're feeling. What's it like to keep love a secret from the person you care about?" She looked up at him. "What's it like to pretend not to care?" He didn't answer, so she pressed on, her tone of voice wistful and yet morbidly amused as well. "I never could do it. I wish I could. I wish I could pack my things right now and leave this stupid city with nothing more than a carefree glance in your direction—but I _can't_."

"Do you think it was _easy_ for me?" He raised his voice in—was it anger? Shock? Self-righteousness? Perhaps all three.

"Well, wasn't it?"

Heavily he fell down into the creaking, hopelessly fussy walnut chair his mother had insisted on keeping from their old house.

"It was never…that simple, Scarlett." Rhett's voice sounded hollow to his own ears. "Every time I left Atlanta the urge…the _need _to return to you was stronger than before. _God_, I loved you," he muttered, restlessly avoiding her gaze as he spun his story of sick obsession. "More than any man should love anything. I loved you so much that it became a near sickness and I hated it. I hated how out of control I felt around you, but I could never keep myself away for very long." He balled his fists so tightly the knuckles turned white. "The last time I left, with Bonnie, was the worst. I resented your hold so much when we came back that I…" His self-loathing made the sentence's intended course clear. He ran a hand through his graying hair agitatedly. Though he avoided looking at her directly, Rhett could hear that she was physically holding in a breath, waiting for him to speak again. "There's more than one thing I never said I was sorry about."

"Oh, Rhett." He looked up, surprised to hear not anger or accusation in her voice. "Don't kill yourself over that, it was years ago. I said some things to you that were just as bad, worse even—and I didn't mean them anymore than you did—" she choked out her next clause, "before I had my accident."

Her face took on a more familiar shape just then, one of disdainful disapproval.

"Of course," she continued, with her typical shrewishness, "It was cruel and rotten and skunkish of you to say those things to me…but I knew you didn't mean them, even at the time. And I've come to understand why you said those things, too—"

"You haven't," he interrupted, bluntly. "You couldn't understand. _I_ don't even understand myself." Rhett snorted with derision. "There's no logical, rational, sane reason why a man would tell the woman carrying his child, his _wife,_ by God, to 'cheer up' and look forward to the possibility of miscarrying."

She physically recoiled from the bleak harshness of his words, saying nothing except with her eyes, and he plunged the knife deeper into his own conscience with a reckless abandon.

"I never set out to hurt you, Scarlett. I never wanted to be the man I became when I met you, or when I married you. None of my other sins compare to the ones I committed against you. To make myself feel better, I used to say, 'she's driving you to this, this is _her_ fault'," He gave another hollow laugh, "Pathetic, isn't it, how often we humans blame our own failings on others? I never could own up to them."

The admissions that had festered within him were pouring forth like water over a dam—or was it a precipice? These confessions were not the earth-shattering revelations he had exposed the last time he had walked out on her—these were the weaknesses, the insecurities he had kept locked tightly away from her for a century. Somehow it was easier to lay them bear before her now.

Perhaps it was because now he knew that she would not laugh at them.

"It couldn't have been easy," she said, struggling to speak with the gentleness that had never come naturally to her.

"Do you mean it?"

"Mean what?"

"You just said that you—" he stopped himself, uncertain. Uncertain as he so rarely was. "You didn't truly believe what you were saying when…" A sharp and sudden realization dawned on her as she watched him withhold what he wanted to say with an almost physical pain. "After…did you mean what you said after…"

"Oh, God—no, no!" she implored, urgently. As quickly as Scarlett had pulled away from him she crossed the room and placed one hand on his shoulder, gingerly. She had never comforted him before, truly, and there was an immense strange and unsettling feeling between them at the roles reversal.

Rhett had never let Scarlett inside his soul and so she had never been in this position.

He forced himself to look up, straight into her clear eyes.

"The only crime you're guilty of on that account, Rhett Butler," she said, with extreme conviction, "Is loving her too much."

For the first time since he had met her Rhett saw a trace of wisdom behind her hard and untouchable eyes. She would never know that at that moment she had said the exactly what he needed to hear.

"If loving someone too much can even _be_ a crime," she added, quietly. Her eyes were watery. "I've never been guilty of it, that's for certain. I haven't been able to show any of my children love, not even her."

"She loved you just as you are, Scarlett." _Just like her father._ "All of your children love you—in spite of the fear you've managed to instill in them in equal measures."

Scarlett laughed unsteadily, almost as if she was drunk..

"I'm trying to—trying to be better about them," she admitted. "Trying to be kinder. It's never come naturally me. I suppose it's because I didn't love their fathers." Scarlett returned to her seat by the vanity and massaged her temples wearily. "Caring about Bonnie was heads and tails easier than caring about Wade or Ella—that I might've felt more than fondness for you should've been obvious. Especially when—" She swallowed hard. "I wanted that last child so badly…"

"Oh, _God…_"

He could barely bring himself to look at her. She had _wanted_ it…she had wanted his child and he had denied them both the joy that child would have brought. Rhett crossed to the window in agitation, torment racking him.

"God, Scarlett, words will never absolve me. I killed our children and I nearly killed you as well." He turned back around as violently as a caged animal. "You were right to say what you did after Bonnie died, I _am_ a murd—"

_CRACK_

This strike on his face was, if possible, even harder and more deliberate than the one she had given him earlier. No sooner had the words left his mouth did she leap out of the chair and slap him hard across the face. Scarlett radiated self-righteous anger. Her eyes bore into his like twin flints of jade.

"Stop it. Just _stop it_, Rhett," she snarled, hard and unforgiving. "For God's sake, will you stop blaming yourself? They were accidents, plain and simple, and they could have happened to anyone. Just because you spoiled Bonnie does not mean you killed her. Do you think your daughter would've wanted her father to spend the rest of his life wallowing in drink and self-pity?"

All at once, he found his anger at her rising—the tightly reigned rage that so often sprung to the surface when she, with her blunt ruthlessness, cut to the heart of the truth.

"I've been off the drink for months," he said, lightly—dangerously. It was the voice that indicated he would like to throttle her.

"Well, how about the self-pity?" she continued her onslaught without mercy. "Are you about done with that?"

"So help me God, Scarlett—" He dug his fingers into his palms so hard it seemed as though they might bleed. "Not everyone has your elastic ability to pick themselves up again from everything life throws at them. Some of us have the damned sense to just _stay down_."

"I thought you were a survivor!" she railed at him as he turned his back again. "I thought you were like me—someone who prefers life and living to the alternative!" Neither one of them was bothering to keep their voices down.

"Who are you to judge how I've been spending my time since I left?" he asked, his tightly gripped control on his emotions slipping like sand through fingers. "Who are _you_ to say I haven't been alive?"

Like a viper, she circled him in a split second, forcing him to face her head-on.

"Well…_have_ you?"

He didn't have to think hard to know the answer. No. She was right about him, probably more correct than even she realized. Things in Charleston were peaceful, refined, genteel: but these were not the qualities of what he had always aspired to do before shuffling off his mortal coil.

He was not alive here.

"I've been…surviving," he dodged, before evasively continuing, "Something you're familiar with, no doubt. It seems to be your _oeuvre_."

Scarlett ignored the unfamiliar turn of phrase and instead stepped closer to him, a concern written over her face so clearly that it nearly bowled him over.

"When are you going to forgive yourself, Rhett?" she pleaded, passionately, gripping the lapels of his shirt. "You'll never heal if you don't—you'll never be _you_ again."

"The man you want me to be is dead, Scarlett—he died with Bonnie and nothing is going to bring him back."

"Shut up!" she yelled, trying desperately to shake his immovable frame. "You are a liar and a coward and that is _not true_!" She dropped his shirt and put one hand on his cheek tenderly, reverently. He was frozen, powerless to pull away from her. "That man has never died and will never die. I know he's in there, buried deep inside—he's hurt and in pain but he hasn't given up yet! Not entirely."

She was trying to convince herself, too.

"I wish I could see the world in as absolute terms as you do," he said, in a low voice, not breaking eye contact with her. "You're so hopelessly naïve, Scarlett."

"I'm not wrong about you. I know you keep yourself feeling guilty, but you don't have to." Her reputation as the most stubborn woman he'd ever met was well earned. "The scars will never go away completely, but if you'd just come back home—"

"What is it you think will happen? Things will miraculously fall into place and we, a man and a woman who haven't even slept in the same bed for over four years, will somehow be happy living together? That's not how the world works, Scarlett!"

"I've never thought it would that easy—listen," she said, understandingly, letting the hand drop from his face. "I know why you don't want to try again. You're afraid I'm going to try and, and…you said you never told me because I'd hold a whip over your head. You think I'm going to try to hurt you, just like I've always done." Her face contorted into one of those frighteningly feverish, intense gazes he had once spent hour fantasizing about receiving. "That's not what I'm going to do, though—not at all!"

_You're wrong_, he thought, looking down at her frank and trusting visage. _I'm not any more afraid of being hurt by you than I've ever been._

_I'm afraid of hurting _you_, Scarlett. I'm afraid of hurting you more than I already have._

This had never occurred to him, but as soon as the idea flickered across his consciousness he knew it was the truth. He was as afraid of his own capacity to cause pain as he was of hers. Rhett could recall the agony of his aching guilt in the weeks following her miscarriage with blinding clarity, in spite of being drunk the entire time. He had been so sure she was going to die, so completely certain: and the torment of it had nearly ripped his soul in two.

He could never face it again. He could never face the possibility of seeing her in pain and knowing he was the cause of it.

"It's…no good, Scarlett," he spoke aloud, finally. "I just—_can't_."

She said absolutely nothing for a long moment. In that moment all emotion slid off her face. Physically she pulled away from him, the intense feelings and convictions she had been professing only a minute before a thing of the distant past. It was almost as if she was mimicking him.

"Well, Rhett, frankly," she broke the silence, eerily calm. "If I beat you in the next two legs of our little contest, you won't really have much choice in the matter." She was deadly serious.

That Scarlett even still wanted to go through with her ridiculous competition had not even occurred to him after the way she stormed out hours earlier.

"Oh, for the love of—what sense does that make?" The man could not help but throw up his hands in despair and her relentless pig-headedness. "What point is there in going on with this charade? We'll only both be miserable under the circumstances."

"Well, at least we'll be miserable together," she shot back, voice dripping with unadulterated sarcasm.

"Scarlett—"

"No, Rhett. You don't get to just walk away from this one. You don't want to think about the consequences if you don't honor our agreement."

He started as if she had thrown hot oil in his face. With her own special brand of scorn Scarlett had put him on the defensive once again.

"Is that a _threat, _Mrs. Butler?" he asked, coldly. Instead of cowering before his impressive physical presence, she simply glared at him and walked back over to the vanity.

"Not a very nice feeling, is it?" she called over her shoulder. "Being threatened by the one you're married to?"

_Is this how I've treated her over the years?_

Even if he was thinking it, he didn't dare let her see that he might recognize the grain of truth in her words.

"How can you even compare—"

"You think you're always the one who gets to decide, don't you, Rhett?" she cut him off, sharply. "When you proposed to me you probably said to yourself, 'I'm going to get a "yes" out of that woman no matter _what_'." She picked up her brush from the table as though she were going to use it again, thought better of it, and slammed it back down again on the wood vanity with a loud _thwack. _"Well, just like then, one of us has told the other one they don't want to be married." She pulled out a hairpin from her coiffure and savagely threw it at the mirror. "This time it'll be _me_ who gets what they want."

"I told you…I don't love you anymore."

"How can I believe you?" she cried, plaintive and bordering on hysteria. "How can I trust that you're telling me the truth? You've never been honest with me about your feelings in the past—what reason do I have to believe you now?"

"If you don't believe me now, you never will." His counter was half-hearted and weary and he knew it. Instead of yelling back at him, she fled to the bed and collapsed on it, not to cry, but to lie down. They were both exhausted by the exchange—physically, mentally, spiritually. Neither one of them had anything left to say, let alone the energy to say it. The intense anger they were both feeling deflated like a balloon almost at once.

He avoided looking at her, instead returning to his default retreat: staring out the window. Over the course of this day he had felt the lightening of some loads on his soul—in the same instant, new guilty burdens had replaced them. What he needed was _time_—time to process what had been said, time to evaluate this new Scarlett. The woman he thought he knew better than himself had proven she could still surprise him. He wanted to re-group—plan his next course of action, strategize. It was a necessity now more than ever.

"Rhett?" she broke him out his brooding reverie with a half-yawned query. "Can we talk about this more tomorrow? I'm afraid you've worn me out and I need to lie down again."

"Of course. I'll leave you be," he said, finally abandoning his place by the window. Awkwardly, he did not make a move for the door, instead standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. An uneasy calm had settled over them both. It was a calm Rhett recognized: the quiet, forced complacency of two armies who have no choice but to retreat after violent battle, but neither of which is any closer to surrender.

He sighed heavily.

"I'm sorry I slapped you again," she apologized, suddenly, from her place on the bed, her cheeks turning red. "I really ought to find a better way to—"

"Express your displeasure?" he finished for her, smirking. She smiled wryly in return. Things had truly returned to a sort of normal. "Don't bother. I'm used to it by now."

He stepped over the proverbial casualties in the room and made for the door as she was finally laying her head down on the pillow.

"You might like to take a nap yourself, Rhett," she called after him, sleepily. Curious as to her meaning, he turned back around.

"I never sleep during the day, you know that."

"Yes, well, since I've told your mother we'll be going out to dinner tonight…"

His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Dare I ask _why_ you told her such a thing?"

"That isn't strictly all I told her…I said that we might do a bit of dancing, and after that possibly play a few rounds of…cards…" Her eyes drooped shut.

"What—_Scarlett!_"

It was too late—she had already fallen fast asleep. His wife lay sprawled out on the bed, mouth wide open, snoring gently. His renewed displeasure vanished at the picture of peace she made, lying on the bed.

_Bonnie used to sleep just like her mother._

Reluctantly, he closed the door behind him with care before walking back downstairs.

In a few hours he would be back in the ring with Scarlett. As an interested observer of the human race, he marveled at the chaotic nature of his relationship with his wife—the blurring of the lines between bitter competition, tender admissions and erotic tension into one toxic package was probably unique to this world.

_Have we gotten anywhere these last two days—or are we back where we started?_

He didn't know anything anymore.

**I feel like some people are going to bite my head off about Scarlett's reaction. I really wanted to explore this idea that her self-esteem is so bad she would actually blame herself for losing before blaming him. In fact, the whole inversion of the blame game S&R played stemmed from that idea. Sorry for lack of contest, but it'll be back next time around.**


	6. It's Time To Duel

"Well, what do you think?"

It took highly cultivated skill for him not to laugh out loud.

"Very appropriate for the occasion and very…" He paused a hairs-breadth of a second. "_You._"

The sly insult went unnoticed by his astonishingly vain wife—the same wife who he could hardly believe was nearly thirty. At the moment she was too busy preening in the mirror to notice the raised eyebrows of her spouse as he appraised her choice of dress.

It was an elaborately embroidered silk confection patterned with ostentatious red and black diamonds, no doubt to go with the theme of a night of cards. The sleeves were absurdly puffed confections, quite beyond the day's fashion—he was almost surprised by them. Low cut, of course, tawdry and distasteful, and still Scarlett managed to pull if off with aplomb.

It was probably because she wore it with the self-awareness of a cat donning a platinum collar.

"So, I take it you are the Queen of Diamonds?" Rhett regarded her thoughtfully in the mirror from behind. "I would have thought clubs suited you better, my dear."

She finished powdering before turning in her seat to regard him, aloofly.

"I take it that was supposed to be some sort of a joke?" Scarlett asked, eyes half-closed, exuding an air of magnanimous patience.

"Truly you have a gift for understanding the finer nuances of conversation, Scarlett," he mocked, softly. Instead of answering, she disdainfully ignored his remark and turned her attention back to the mirror and finished the last minute adjustments to her face, pinching her cheeks with as much care as he was sure she had taken since she was fifteen years old.

"I don't see why you won't tell me where we're going," he continued, conversationally. "It's not as though I won't see it soon enough."

"Surprising you is a novel experience for me, Rhett—do let me enjoy it," she answered, with uncharacteristic dryness. He barely noticed, though, because he was too busy appraising her while she was distracted and would not notice his particular attention.

It was the dress. Despite its gaudy design and bright colors, he could not help but notice the way it pushed up her bosom and so perfectly highlighted the dips and curves of her frame. If he had lived to see them, Rhett would have likened Scarlett's form to the abstract Art Nouveau glass works of the 20th century. Perhaps it was the combination of her womanly frame, all curves and softness, with those arresting and too strong features that had created his incomprehensible fascination with her. He hated what a romantic, sentimental fool he'd been every time in the past when he'd thought of her as "unearthly".

There was nothing unearthly about her. Scarlett was the essence of the earth—elemental, powerful, volatile—a scheming Circe to his Ulysses. His wife was all the extremes of life, extremes that time and circumstance had tried to crush and repress—love, desire, and grief and joy in equal strokes. She had channeled these natural feelings into unfortunate passions—survival and greed, obsessions of hers that he had never really tried to understand or lessen the burden of, so caught up was he in his own obsession—her.

Rhett's greatest weapon was, and had always been, his ability to conceal his thoughts, motives and emotions. It was a great tool—his enemies always sensed, in some primal way, that he was a man who could only be pushed _so _far. They could never be certain how far that was—which kept them off balance. They never knew how hard he might push back.

The problem with Scarlett was that Rhett himself didn't know how far he might push her back.

It was a terrifying thought.

The rational, restrained part of Captain Butler was watching her finish up on her hair with a detached air of calm—a kind of Jeffersonian, enlightened aura surrounding him—one that would put Ashley Wilkes to shame. The more primal side of him wanted to claim what was _his_ right here, right now—on the dresser, in fact.

He liked to think of himself as civilized and refined from years of simply living—he liked society, culture and art, and he accepted the pointless laws and protocol that were invariably attached to them. The nuances and hypocrisies of polite humanity had kept him amused for years, even when he was attempting to blend in for the sake of his young daughter.

But Scarlett…she brought out another side of him, his uncontrolled and earthy self—the closest thing he had to a "true" self.

His true self was a bit of a bastard.

"Are we going or what?" Scarlett abruptly jolted him out of his stupor, tapping her foot impatiently.

"After you," he smoothly bowed her to the door. "I assume you've made arrangements for food? It's always been a matter of prime concern for you, in my experience." Her stomach decided to audibly gurgle at that moment, to which he smirked and she glowered.

A half-hour later they were eating from a rather informal spread in Scarlett's private red room at The Lady and the Tiger. Scarlett had arranged for some food to be brought in—never having had a particularly sophisticated palate, it was simple fair—chicken, potatoes, dumplings—comfort food, some of his wife's favorites. Odd choices, knowing the fanatical desire she had once possessed to impress him with her so-called worldliness. Rhett considered making a wry remark on the subject, but the sight of her vigorously inhaling what was on the table in front of her froze the words in his throat. He hadn't seen her devouring with such wild abandon since their honeymoon.

There was still a tense temporary truce between them, and he had no real desire to break it, so for almost the entire meal they ate in a comfortable silence.

When Scarlett started in on her second baked potato, though, he had to say something.

"I guess it's true what they say about the Irish and their potatoes," he remarked, lightly.

"What?" she asked, through a full mouth.

"You're acting as though you've just come through the blight."

"I'm sorry if my manners offend," she swallowed. "This is the first thing I've eaten since I left your mother's house with Sally this morning."

"Why the hell didn't you eat anything this afternoon?" Aggressive forcefulness was a smokescreen for concern, as was so often the case with Rhett.

"For some reason I lost my appetite," his wife replied, coldly.

For once, Rhett lost the ability to speak. She, to her credit, did not press the implied accusation—she simply returned to her food.

When they were done with the tense meal, she rang for a servant to clear away the food and remove the dining table, replacing it with a smaller cards table and drink cart. Her male companion watched silently as a carafe of wine was laid delicately on cart.

"What, no 'impartial judge'?" Rhett asked, as the man swiftly and silently exited the room. For some reason the obvious had not occurred to him—he was truly facing Scarlett alone tonight.

"You only need two people to play a game of poker, far as I can tell."

"And here I thought you'd be desirous of showing off your newfound abilities for someone—or will my undoubtedly humble admissions of admiration be enough for you?" Her eyes flashed in familiar irritation at his ironically florid speech patterns.

"Oh, hush, will you?" Scarlett demanded, a familiar request that he acquiesced to immediately. He was pleased that he had successfully flustered her.

"So, Mrs. Butler, I'm sure you have some set of arcane rules in mind—elucidate my ignorance."

She gave him a blank stare.

"Scarlett—the _rules_?"

As quickly as her attention had faltered, she snapped out of it, and gave him a purposeful, almost affected glare. Scarlett reached under the table and plucked out a large plush velvet red bag (which looked as though it had been made to match the room) and aggressively deposited the contents onto the table.

Rhett Butler found himself staring at a see of snow-white poker chips.

"Count out a hundred for yourself," she directed, primly. There were such an immense number of them that Rhett was already occupied with the task of keeping them from rolling off the table.

"We're betting with chips?" Her husband raised a single eyebrow as he picked up a stray from the thickly carpeted floor. "How exactly is this going to work, Scarlett?" His tone was even, not betraying his surprise in the slightest.

"We'll each start with one hundred of _these_—" She held one up, gently caressing it with her index finger, "And we'll use them to bet. And keep betting them until one of us has all two hundred—or concedes, of course."

"All two hundred?" he repeated, disbelievingly. "That could take _hours_."

"If I really am as easy to read as you say I am, Rhett, it should be easy." The words had a distinctly challenging ring to them—as did the stubborn tilt of her jaw.

"You're trying to drag this out, Scarlett," he replied.

"If you say so, Captain Butler." She handed him an unopened deck of cards, her whole face crackling with irrepressible energy as she did so. The implicit request was that he shuffle them for her.

Wordlessly, he broke the seal and, with the obvious skill of a seasoned professional, employed the Riffle shuffling technique. The playing cards melded together in a perfect bridging arch, again and again and again…

"You do that so well," Scarlett admired openly, the edge in her voice all but gone. She leaned on one petite hand and watched him shuffle, sighing wistfully. "How long have you been gambling, anyhow?" He was instantly aware of the sincerity of her question—and he found himself strangely touched by her obviously genuine interest in his past. She had rarely paid anything more than polite or sordid mind to his past over the entire course of their marriage.

"Nearly thirty years. I started playing poker in my West Point days—in fact, it was my propensity for high stakes gambling that was the final straw on the back of that illustrious institution." His mouth quirked with amusement at her puzzled expression. "Did I never tell you the story of how I was expelled, Scarlett?"

"Oh! Never." She leaned over the walnut tabletop, clearly intrigued. The shuffled cards lay forgotten…at least for the moment.

"Well, one Saturday night, I had gone out with a few friends to enjoy a little…youthful male merriment." His eyes gleamed. "Back then I wasn't much of a card shark, and after three too many drinks…well, despite having emptied my wallet entirely, I decided to continue playing."

"But how could you, if you had no money?"

"Let me put it this way: you've heard that expression about 'having nothing but the clothes on your back'?" She nodded her assent, and he delivered the punch line. "Well, I left that saloon with even _less._"

"Oh, Rhett!" Her face turned a brilliant shade of red immediately. "You didn't!" Half-scandalized, half-amused could best describe her reaction.

"Did you know that walking naked through the courtyard is a criminal offense at West Point?" He mock-sighed in regret. "And so ended the illustrious military career of Cadet Butler."

"That's what you were thrown out of school for?" She didn't bother to mask her blatant surprise. "I always thought there was some woman involved…" The sentence trailed off—but Rhett could not help but notice how Scarlett did not look displeased that "some woman" was not the cause of his expulsion from West Point.

"Such is the embellishment of truth in order to create modern legend, my dear—or dime store fiction, more aptly put."

"The Tarleton twins were expelled from college—but that was because they were lazy and could barely read between the two of them." The memory of her two beaux brought a nostalgic watery smile to her face. "But I've always been sure that you weren't kicked out because you lacked the brains—you know, Rhett, if you'd put the slightest bit of effort in, I think you could've done quite well. You'd have been someone mighty important in the army—and been quite the southern gentleman, too."

"And I would've been utterly miserable throughout the entire affair." He laughed softly, mockingly—he was surprised by the expression of clarity that flickered across Scarlett's face at that moment. It was as though she had been puzzling over one of those optical illusion pictures for days, trying to figure it out, when the woman's silhouette hidden in the branches of the tree had at last become clear to her.

"Aren't you now?" The question came out of the blackness of the void. "That's exactly what you've been doing the last few months, isn't it? Making yourself into the perfect southern gentleman."

"I'm tired, Scarlett."

The statement lingered in the air, unqualified. For one of the few times in his life, Rhett didn't need to explain what he meant to her. She gave his bland expression a hard, shrewd look, before abruptly snatching the discarded deck of cards off the table and forcing it into his grip.

"Not too tired to play, I hope." She deliberately misunderstood his remark to save them the trouble of explanation. Which, he supposed, must've been a nice change from _actually_ misinterpreting what he was saying.

"Never," was his reply, and he felt some of the weariness from earlier today—hell, from the last few years—fall away. Scarlett wasn't judging him, or casting aspersions, or damning him to fire—she just wanted to play a game of poker.

Which he would join her in, he thought, dealing them each their first hands. He looked down at his cards for a fraction of a second—_totally worthless_—before looking up, to see Scarlett pushing two cards towards him on the table.

"I'd be much obliged if you'd give me two, sir," she requested, her voice cloyingly sugared.

"I don't know what's worse," was his murmured response, as he slid her two new cards, but discarded none of his own. "The hard-as-nails business woman or that simpering belle affectation you put on."

"Which did you fall in love with?" she coyly inquired by way of showing him which was her personal favorite at the moment.

"Neither. But I've decided I prefer you when you're selling lumber to when you're trying to sell yourself." If he expected her to react strongly to his dredging up an embarrassing episode in their sordid history, he was sadly disappointed. The woman across from him barely bat an eyelash.

"I see," she waved a hand dismissively. "If you dislike it so much, it's only because…well, you haven't exactly been able to resist me in the past, have you? I'd have had you that day in the jail if I'd only remembered Pitty's gloves. And I'll wager three." She finished her grandly out of character speech by tossing three of the poker chips on the table.

"It wouldn't have taken me long to figure out your game, Scarlett." _Unlike now. I'm starting to doubt even she knows what game we're playing_.

"But by then I would've had your ring on my finger and that three hundred dollars in the bank." She turned her attention back to the cards in front of her and assumed a deliberately casual, neutral expression—as if she could take or leave whatever she was holding. This sort of posturing was something that a lot of rookie card-players did, because it seemed like what you would do if you had a really awful hand and wanted to conceal it.

In fact, this made it all the more obvious.

_She doesn't have anything. She's bluffing._

"I'll see your three and raise you seven." It was better to feel her out, see exactly what rules she played by—because, make no mistake, everyone played by an entirely different set of rules—then rush into anything. He placed his wager more carefully in the center than she had.

"You think I'm bluffing, don't you, Rhett?" For someone reason, that assumption was not offensive to her. "And not just bluffing, you think I'm bluffing really _badly._"

He said nothing—such an adroit measurement of his feelings at this time brooked no comment.

"I fold," she declared suddenly, tossing her head in the hair proudly. He allowed himself the luxury of looking mildly surprised. Of all the possible strategies churning around in that uncommon mind, hidden behind those glittering cat eyes, the safe and easy route was the last he'd been expecting. Especially now.

"Really."

Even more surprising was her choice to show him the five cards that he had deemed undoubtedly worthless. When Scarlett flipped them, Rhett found himself staring down at a pair of jacks—clubs and spades—and a pair of fours.

_Two pair—not a bad hand at all._ _Why would she…?_

"I don't see the point bluffing with you—more times than not you see right through me."

She delicately pushed the miniscule pile towards him. His win had dented his pride more than it had her hoard.

"Aren't you going to return the favor and show me what you were hiding?"

"There's no requirement that I do."

She laughed regally and raised one hand to her lacey neckline, toying with a stray thread unconsciously.

"Always the gentleman. But I don't need to see your hand to know what a liar you are, Rhett Butler."

"The key to poker isn't knowing that your opponent _can_ lie, Scarlett—it's knowing _when._"

"I think the trick for me is going to be figuring out when you're not lying."

The implicit accusation stung him—more than he was willing to admit to even himself.

"I've tried to be as honest with you as I could, Scarlett—"

"We've been through all this—don't bother going through the trouble of explaining yourself _again_."

The rational part of him knew that rising to her bait was pointless—but, as he had so many times before where Scarlett was involved, he ignored the rational part.

"If you valued honesty as much as you claim, Scarlett," he argued, curtly. "Then you wouldn't have ignored what I told you about Ashley Wilkes and his 'feelings' for you, such as they were, for so many years. That 'truth' was certainly staring you straight in the face."

"Well, if I'd known your precious advice was coming from someone who actually cared about me, I might've taken it to heart!" She retorted, hotly. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes flashing—Rhett inwardly smirked.

They both looked down at their new hands—the seasoned card shark sparing the five rectangles only a single once-over.

_Two queens…_

When he discarded the rest of his hand and a third joined them, he looked over at his opponent, sizing her up. She was scrutinizing her hand with intense concentration, absently and nervously chewing her lip at the same time.

_She's got absolutely nothing._ He was sure of it this time.

At that moment, as if by magic, she felt his gaze on her and raised her eyes to meet his. At once he was staring at a bright and flirtatious smile—another of Scarlett's shifting moods.

"You alright, honey? Not too…warm in here, is it?" She twirled a loose strand of dark hair around one finger, once again displaying all the subtlety of a rabid muskrat.

"Just fine, my dear," he laughed. "I must confess, it is rather strange to have you inquiring after my well-being."

"I'm always concerned about you Rhett—you're my husband, what woman doesn't care about her husband?"

Just as the words left her mouth, she became aware of their supreme irony.

"I can think of one or two—but don't worry," he reassured her, his eyes gleaming with bland amusement. "I believe you. You must be smiling for me, for you sure as hell aren't for your cards."

"Oh?" Her face radiated self-confidence—utterly transparent self-confidence. "Since when do you read minds?"

"When it comes to yours, 'since always', my dear." Rhett's eyes unconsciously raked over her face and, rather like her neckline, plunged southward.

_God, only she could look good in that silk abomination._

He forced himself to think of the business at hand—Rhett's mind followed the instruction briskly, but his body and eyes lingered over less than pure thoughts.

"And I'd bet twenty of _these_ that I'm right."

"I'll take that bet," she countered, recklessly. He could hardly believe his good fortune—or her bravado.

She was holding a pair of threes.

_Is she even trying?_

It was the question that went through his mind more than any other as their contest progressed. Scarlett had been as sharply focused as a razor blade in their gun duel…to find her so cavalierly mediocre now was a surprising turn of events.

And oddly _unsatisfying._

Any attempt at a poker face was virtually non-existent. Every time his brazen wife looked pleased with herself, the cards she'd been dealt were good—a full house, perhaps, or a straight—and every time she wrinkled her brow in distaste she was holding a bum hand.

He knew this because Scarlett was incapable of not calling his hands—both the bluffs and the true winners. Since that first round she had not once folded, instead favoring an aggressive strategy of see-call, see-call. Rhett found that he could raise a bet any amount and she would see it. Her adversarial personality would not allow her to back down from a challenge.

It was an admirable trait in any other situation, but it made for a piss-poor poker player. The real trick to the game was patience—the ability to wait and see (and of course, to hedge one's bets.) Rhett had a natural gift for wait and see—his relations with _her_ were proof of that—but she had absolutely no aptitude for the treasured virtue.

And it was costing her, for she was losing—though not badly. The stubbornly determined woman was dragging the game out, winning small every few hands in order to sustain her rapidly depleting stock of chips. He wondered if her stalling tactics, manner of dress and poor performance were all ploys to lure him into a false sense of security. He was sure she was up to something—what exactly that something was remained to be seen.

The obvious choice (and Scarlett's character would tend towards the obvious choice) was seduction—she knew she still had some measure of physical power over him, it was only natural that she use such a endowment as a weapon against him. As they cycled through more and more rounds, he began to wonder if the entire card game was a façade, an excuse to get him alone for several hours and put her feminine charms to good use.

"I'll have two cards, if you please."

But that didn't fit either. For, as charming a partner as she'd been for most of the evening, she had not once offered him a drink. If it had been _him_ in the same situation, plying her with liquor would have been the first tactic he tried to get her in bed. It made sense doubly for Scarlett to employ this method, for she knew of his penchant for rigid self-control.

"You know, Scarlett, I rarely hold a hand of cards without holding a glass of whiskey in the other," he remarked, casually feeling out the issue. She did not honor him with any particular attention or a strong visible reaction to the comment—she didn't even look up.

"I'm sorry I didn't offer you a drink, I thought you'd want your wits about you," she replied, with unnecessary tartness. "But far be it for me to presume."

"Half the reason most men play poker is so that they have an excuse to drink indiscriminately."

"I'm not sure I can manage you after a few hours of whiskey and cards." Her tone was muted, and she very carefully avoided looking him directly in the eye.

"What's not to manage?" he pressed on, boldly. "The worst that happens is I end up walking home without the shirt on my back again—or anything on my back, really." He laughed inwardly at the delightful crimson hue of her face at that comment. It was still so easy to ruffle her about things of _that_ nature, even for her husband.

He was, in spite of himself, enjoying this. Compared to the ordeal earlier that day, this was quite pleasant, and he felt far more relaxed. Scarlett had put away her adversarial face of the morning, instead wearing a fairly congenial one. She laughed when she lost a hand, good-naturedly—it felt, oddly enough, like a casual evening game of cards that a husband and wife would play. Rhett suspected that part of Scarlett's willingness to part with the white chips stemmed from the fact that they didn't actually represent money.

When she lost her cloying sweetness of the first half of the evening, and it dissolved into a more genuine Scarlett—the sort of Scarlett that was in a good mood from having made a large lumber sale—he really let his guard.

A mortal error.

Rhett had whittled her down to only sixty-five, and he planned on finishing her off the next good hand he got.

_This is it._

A straight. Diamonds.

This is it, he thought, this is the hand. He could finish things right here and now if he just—forgive the phrase—played his cards right.

"I'll wager twenty," he started off, and she met his serene expression with her own obvious grim determination.

"I can see that," she smiled and pushed the same number of chips out of her own meager pile. "And I'll raise you the same."

_She must have something to give her that much confidence…but it's not _that _good._ _If Scarlett had a hand good enough to beat a straight in diamonds, she'd be grinning from ear to ear._

"I think I'm read to end this little contest of ours—what do you say to it? I'll wager the remainder of what you have—"

"—Why stop there?" she cut him off, roughly shoving the rest of her white discs towards the center of the table.

Both of his eyebrows rose in mild surprise.

"You have nothing else to bet, that's why," he finally said, condescension oozing from every word.

"If we were playing the game the usual way, these chips would be worth five dollars a piece." Her crimson mouth turned up at the corners while his own frowned. "What if I wagered something of comparable value in order to…raise the stakes?"

"You wouldn't bet something that had been paid for with _my _money."

"Of course not!" she snapped, silkily—insulted by the very idea. "My third of Tara. It's worth—why, what's a third of three hundred again?" Her sarcasm was laced with bitter resentment.

"That farm is worth more than your taxes during the war, Scarlett. You know that."

"It's as much as my home will ever be worth to you."

In truth, he admired the surly and resilient plantation—just as he admired her mistress. But Scarlett assumed that he looked down on her for holding onto the land that Gerald had carved out for himself—and he would not dispute the accusation now.

Scarlett gambling her father's house was yet another surprising twist—as he observed the stalwartly determined creature across from him, though, he wondered why he was so bewildered by it.

"You want to bet Tara?" He kept his face impenetrably neutral.

The farm was essentially worthless to him—worthless to anyone with as much wealth as he. But he could hardly deny her the right to use it as a bargaining chip, for it did have pure monetary value and it was one of the only things that she had built up and kept up for the most part without his assistance—much to his chagrin at the time.

She looked even more confident, her arms crossed in front of her chest defiantly—he tried to brush aside any niggling doubts he might have about her ability to bluff. With careful and impartial evaluation of his own ability to read her, he felt sure he was right…and yet…_Tara_.

There had been a time when he would've wagered his very soul that he knew her thoughts, so utterly obsessed with her was he. Now, though—now he felt unsure of himself, out of his depth, for Scarlett had proven over the long months of his absence that she was capable of things even he could not predict.

He had expected her to make some futile attempt at winning him back, but nothing on this scale…was it possible that she was capable of truly loving him? That this was not born of desperation, but true and honest feeling?

She had proven to him how well she knew him, if nothing else. She knew him better than even she realized.

_She's bluffing…she knows that I'll never take that farm away from her, even when I win this. Tara is more important to her than anything—she'd never risk it unless she knew that she wasn't risking it at all._

"I'll play your game, Scarlett. Tara for the pot."

His face did not change as he flipped over his final hand. Still the impassive mask.

"Straight—diamonds. It's over."

"You're right, Rhett." She turned over each card in her hand with almost theatrical slowness—but at the same time, it was dizzyingly fast.

Ace…King…Queen…Jack…Ten…in hearts.

"Royal flush." Her green eyes seemed to be glowing. "I _am_ the Queen of Hearts."

Any attempt at humility on Scarlett's part fell away at this amazingly improbable turn of events. Gloating, she pulled the entire pot towards herself. She practically radiated victory—but the shock, indignation or anger one would've expected from her husband did not come.

At first, Rhett merely stared stoically at the winning hand, as though he was measuring—calculating—its worth. Then—against all odds, he began to _laugh._ Not the good-natured laugh of a sportsman accepting defeat with placid well-wishes—it was the drawling, mocking laughter she had heard from him so many times in the past, right before he let her in on the joke.

That joke was usually on her.

Scarlett's temper, never controllable, visibly boiled to the surface. This was obviously not how she had envisioned her victory—he was not giving her the satisfaction of looking upset, downtrodden, surprised, impressed.

"What on earth is so damn funny?"

The man who had apparently lost stopped laughing abruptly and resumed his placid and maddeningly calm veneer—with an almost undetectable hint of danger lurking below.

"You, my dear." He folded his hand neatly and placed it facedown on the table. "I knew you couldn't allow yourself to lose this—and I was right. I just wasn't sure exactly how you'd guarantee your success. Though in retrospect, it should've been obvious."

"What does that mean?"

He lost his lightness, then—face darkening and taking on a steely quality that sent a spark of apparent fear in his wife's petite frame, for she unconsciously straightened her spine in awareness, then, like a cornered animal.

"Merely that when I thought to myself that you had a trick up your sleeve, I didn't know how _literally_ correct I was."

"Are you accusing me of something?"

"Do you know what the odds are of drawing a royal flush in five card draw?" he continued, conversationally, ignoring her indignant question. "One in sixty-five thousand. In all my 30 years of playing the game, I have never once seen a man come by that hand honestly. Now, if someone were to accrue the cards necessary for such a surefire winning hand over the course of the game by slipping them into their sleeve, one by one, until the necessary moment—"

"How _dare_ you—you coward, you simply can't admit I've beaten you!" Her voice rose another decibel at his accusations—accusations that he was sure she would, in a second, declare baseless. He, conversely, remained calm—maddeningly calm, _dangerously_ calm. This was not a good sign.

"What I'm interested in is how you learned such a thing," he continued, softly—almost predatory. "You didn't teach yourself that pretty little parlor trick—though it was very well done, I must say. The old adage about all women being born actresses must be true." She was trembling in anger, and he could see the wheels turning in her head—no hard insult was good enough for him in this moment. "I'm guessing you learned it from a real pro. Jack Derby used to pull a scam like this at the tables—was it him?" he demanded, callously.

"I don't have the faintest notion of what you're talking about." Her futile attempt to put her calm, aloof face back on was glaringly transparent. As soon as the game ended she'd discarded that façade—the ability to conceal her thoughts eluded her. Guilt was written plainly on her face.

Rhett felt a painfully familiar tightening in his chest—for "Black Jack" Derby was one of the most disreputable men in Atlanta, a notorious swindler and womanizer that he knew far too well. He'd introduced the man to Scarlett himself, when they were honeymooning, and he had never lost the sneaking suspicion that the man had real designs on her. It was never something that had truly bothered him—until now.

Now it bothered him a great deal.

"But I think you do," he said, slowly—a cobra waiting for the right moment to strike.

"Then prove it, if you're so sure! If you even _can_!"

"Oh, I'm quite sure I can, Mrs. Butler. If my theory is correct, then sewn inside one of the sleeves of that ridiculous frock there's a small pocket." He stood up quickly, and he could see her physically recoil in her seat. "I need only to remove the offending clothing article to prove my theory correct."

Her chair fell to the floor from the force of Scarlett rising from it.

"Don't you dare come near me!"

It seemed as though he had circled the table in the mere blink of an eye. Rhett grabbed her forcibly by the wrists, and she struggled against his iron grip with all of her might.

"Let go of me, you son of a—"

He pulled her towards him, roughly, not caring if he hurt her.

"Be careful what you utter, my sweet," he hissed in her ear. "Or I might make good on my promise of so many moons ago to ring your pretty little neck."

"Unhand me, you bastard," she repeated, voice rasping, less angry than alarmed and shockingly aware, for she seemed to have realized that he had pulled her tightly constricted self so close that they were nearly pressed together.

"Not until you admit that some other bastard has been coming over to see you and teach you your little trick," his hands tightened around her wrists possessively. "In _my _house, no doubt drinking _my _scotch, and being paid with _my _money."

"Be careful," she spat. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were jealous."

Their faces were very close now—he could see every detail of hers…her red lips, parted ever so slightly, the uneven, panting breaths coming forth from them, born from the exertion of fighting and struggling against his deadly grip, his hold on her. How he wanted to crush her lungs, crush the breath right out of her—crush her lips to his—

"Or perhaps you didn't pay him in money at all—perhaps you paid him in other favors in order to get what you wanted." Where were these words coming from? This was some other man, a man who had died long ago—one whose irrational jealousy was snuffed from the universe. He could scarcely control the ravings coming forth from his mouth.

She said nothing—instead those cat eyes glittered in front of him, poisonously, venomously. It was the familiar image from his nightmares, the fickle temptress, taunting him with her secrets.

"Tell me!" Mere inches apart—somehow his hands had slinked their way around her waist.

"No."

"Tell me, now, God help me, or I'll—"

"Concede."

_That damn bitch._

"Say that you concede, and I'll tell you."

The urge to kill her was overwhelmed by another urge, one far stronger and more compelling. _That sly, manipulative, bitch._

"You win—you sly, manipulative _bitch_." All at once he could feel her, all of her—the place where silk ended and soft flesh began was pressed against him, aching to be touched, to be caressed. The air around them crackled with mutual anger and desire. Swiftly, he crushed his lips to hers, pulling her towards him in a dizzying display of possessive dominance. She responded immediately, deepening his embrace with the passionate fervor that could only come from the challenge, the thrill—the raw power that was in them both.

She was maddening and would no doubt drive him over the edge one day, but damn him, this was where she belonged, here, in his arms and nowhere else. He'd kill the first man who tried to take what was _his_, he thought, recklessly running his hands over the familiar form, the curves, the body that he craved and missed and _needed_ in this moment.

"Scarlett—" Rhett broke the kiss reluctantly, but immediately turned his attention to her beautifully exposed ivory neck in consolation. "Derby?" He began a series of kisses from her collarbone to her jaw, each one firmer until by the end he was practically marking her as his own. No doubt the symbolism of the action was lost on her.

"He—he tried to proposition me—" She moaned as his hands began ruthlessly caressing her bodice, his fingers quickly finding an opening between cloth and skin—and utilizing it to its fullest potential. "I…I told him to…go to hell."

He roughly lifted her onto the table, scattering poker chips and cards and their contest everywhere. Scarlett gasped in shock at his fervent ministrations, but he cut off any protests with another violent, desperate kiss—before pulling back again.

"You're easier to deal with when you've just won something." He grinned at the lustfully enraged pink face of his wife, with its swollen mouth and smeared rouge. "If I'd known letting you get away with cheating made you so compliant, I would have tried it _years_ ago."

Scarlett opened her mouth to no doubt give him a tongue-lashing, only to have him pull her in for another forceful kiss. He intended on keeping her mouth occupied with something else, now.

**Dear me, it has been awhile, hasn't it? What can I say, kids, summer was summer and schoolwork comes in September. I've been inching my way through this bad boy, but man, writing poker in an interesting way is really difficult. That may come across in this chapter, actually. Thanks for all the reviews, favs and story alerts (and nagging). It helped me make my way through the 60+ pages of term papers—and this chapter. I hope the end at least made up for the ridiculous wait—OMFG, will S&R have trashy card table sex, only to have Rhett call it a mistake, storm out, and drive a pregnant Scarlett to Ireland? Haha, this story may be absurd, but even I can't write Irish C-section performing witches.**


	7. The Morning After

The light streaming through the window of his mother's house woke Rhett up long before one of her servants could. Groaning, and without opening his eyes, he pulled himself closer to the source of warmth at the center of the bed.

_The…source of warmth?_

He opened his eyes and was only mildly surprised to see that the heat came from a creature that had wrapped herself around him while asleep—his wife. Rhett silently observed her for a few minutes, taking great care to not move from his spot and wake her. She had nuzzled herself into the crook of his arm over the course of the night. Scarlett was still in a very deep sleep, her dark hair strewn too haphazardly for her to be conscious of it. The neckline of her nightgown had been artlessly pushed down so low overnight that even she would be scandalized by how much décolletage she was showing.

Still, through it all, she was beautiful.

As the foggy cloud of slumber lifted, Rhett felt the events of the previous night come back to him. It had not, he thought, wryly, staring at the toile-patterned wall, turned out the way either of them expected.

_Or either of us wanted, for that matter. _

The whole night had been a thinly veiled sexual overture, Rhett realized dimly, as he ran his hands all over the dress he wanted desperately to evaporate into thin air. She had pushed him to the limit this time, and for some reason his brain now equated 'regaining his dignity' with 'taking her on top of this card table.'

Or, he thought, as his fingers nimbly unfastened his wife's corset, he had wanted to do this all night long and was merely lying to himself. Scarlett's learned sense of female propriety was only outmatched by her innate opportunistic streak—she obviously had no intention of stopping him; in fact, she was at this moment proving to be quite obliging.

Still, the motions must be gone through.

"Rhett…" She groaned, using up a brief oxygen-gathering window. "We can't—!"

"Shut up," he cut off her protest with another hard kiss, relishing the noise she made—one of surprise and pleasure mixed. A woman who looked like her and dressed like her shouldn't be _allowed _to complain when a man did what she'd been begging for hours earlier. The dress that hugged her body was designed to be stripped off quickly and efficiently; it was as garish as Christmas wrapping paper and he would treat it as such.

He was so sexually frustrated that he had almost forgotten why he hadn't done this the second she arrived in Charleston.

He lifted Scarlett onto the table. Not protesting, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for another aggressive kiss. Just as fervently, he circled her small frame, relishing in the open-backed dress, the promise of more skin, not thinking—only feeling and _doing_, which was what they both did best anyway. This was so natural, it felt so _right_, and even if this was the path of mutually assured destruction, damn it, he was going to _enjoy_ it.

Until, as had been the frequent occurrence in the last 48-hour-period, the bubble burst.

"Mrs. Butler?"

This time, with a knock on the door.

_Damn, damn, damn!_

Simultaneously, they froze. Another knock. Rhett had his mouth planted on Scarlett's exposed neck, and it took a great deal of self-control on her part not to giggle inanely at the feeling of his mustache brushing against her ear.

"Mrs. Butler?"

Scarlett reluctantly pulled away from him. "For God's sake, Rhett—go see what he wants—"

"If we don't answer, maybe he'll leave." He tried, to no avail, to kiss her again.

"He _won't_ leave!" she hissed back, elbowing him in the stomach, clearly irritated by his reluctance to turn his mind from his libido to the current problem. "He's here to—"

"Your time's up, Mrs. Butler," the voice through the door called out, and he groaned aloud, knowing she was right—whoever the hell it was, they _wouldn't_ go away.

Rhett could hardly believe the farce that his life had become. There he was, a hair's breadth from what would have no doubt proven to be the greatest sexual relief of his life…and someone had come to tell him that the room in which he was about to make wild, passionate love to his wife had an expired lease. Said wife was now desperately trying to refasten her hopelessly undone dress, and meeting with mixed success.

"God's nightgown! Will you quit gawking and help me?" she snapped at him, harried and irritable. She made an absolutely ridiculous picture, still perched above him on the card table, half-dressed, looking every bit the woman caught mid…act.

"Certainly, madam," he crossed to her back, smirking—he had swiftly recovered his good humor despite the unfortunate implications of their plight. "Shall I take it from the, er, rather untimely interruption, that you did not reserve this room for the entire evening?"

"I didn't think I'd _need_ it for the entire evening!" Scarlett squawked, defensively, as he laced her up (and nearly absently placed a light kiss on her exposed shoulder_._) "It seemed like a waste of good money to book it past one."

"Always economical, aren't you, my pet?" was his amused reply, said as he finished refastening the buttons on her dress proper. Once the task was completed, Rhett glided to the door, determined to end the irritating knocking once and for all.

"Mrs. _Butler—_!"

"May I help you?" He opened the door to find a harassed-looking young steward wearing a foppish bowtie and unseemly grimace. Clearly the nightshift at "The Lady and the Tiger" was not a desirable position.

"Oh…" The boy's prominent ears reddened. "Pardon me, sir. I was sent to tell Mrs. Butler that—"

"You were sent to tell my wife to evacuate the suite," Rhett finished for him, dryly. The boy tried and failed not to notice Scarlett, who was still sitting on top of the card table trying desperately to regain the feminine mystique she had lost about twenty minutes previous. Rhett could see out of the corner of his eye into one of the room's many gilded mirrors. He knew that his wife's garish lip rouge was smeared liberally around his mouth.

The boy's look turned from flustered to knowing in an instant. His beady, rat-like eyes—Rhett's irritation magnified the poor young man's faults a hundredfold—darted from man to woman and back again.

"Excuse me, Mr. Butler—I, um, didn't _know_…"

Scarlett waved feebly at the boy from her perch, not bothering to look up at who was at the door. Rhett found himself rolling his eyes at the gawking her exposed cleavage received from the intruder. It was, he thought, as if the boy had never seen anything of the kind before. It took a substantial tip to get him quickly out of the doorway.

_Everyone has a price_, Rhett thought, cynically, before turning his attention back to his wayward wife. She had her arms crossed and was fixing him with a shrewd, hard look.

"What are you smirking about, Rhett Butler?"

"Private joke between the doorman and myself." In truth, he was enjoying the dual absurd and enticing picture she made—but the _real_ reason he was smirking was because of her footwear, a feature of her ensemble he had not as of yet noticed.

Her shoes were bright crimson.

"What charming slippers, Mrs. Butler—and in your usual impeccable taste." He helped her down off the table, their charged encounter still fresh in his mind. Her pointed shoes matched the deep red diamonds woven into her dress, as well as the natural ruby color of her lips—lips that were as soft as he remembered.

Valuing his life over his wit, Rhett decided not to mention that until 1858, women of ill repute in Charleston had been required to wear red shoes to distinguish themselves. He wanted the chance to feel those lips again.

"For God's sake, how many times do you have to tell me that you hate my taste in dresses?" She smoothed her gown peevishly, taking special care not to thank him for his 'gentlemanly courtesy.'

"However many times are necessary for the idea to sink into the impenetrable fortress that is your mind, my love."

"Kindly go to hell, will you?" Even Scarlett could not ignore such blinding sarcasm, he thought, as she pushed past him and out the door of their room and into the larger bar—now almost deserted. He followed, closely on her heels—yet still managing an elegant nonchalance. "If you want to dress me like a doll so badly, you should try living in the same house as me to start."

"Or the same bedroom, perhaps?"

The question stopped Scarlett dead in her tracks, mid-indignant stomp. The man who'd asked did not know where the words had come from any better than she did.

"Yes, that…would make sense." Scarlett didn't turn around, but the quake in her voice was indication enough that she was affected. Reason told him that he should steer the conversation to safer waters while he still maintained some degree of control, but instincts had him barreling full-speed into the maelstrom.

As usual, instincts won out.

"Is that an invitation?" Taking perverse pleasure in the way her ears reddened instantly, Rhett circled her like a shark, wanting to see the full effects of his comment. When he did see her—flustered, biting her lip so delicately, unconsciously betraying the roots of a trained belle—he could not stop himself. His hand found its way to her ear quite of its own accord and cupped her face gently, before moving to the neck, shoulder and arm. He found her hand and traced the familiar palm in a smooth, circular motion.

He enjoyed her quickening pulse even more than the shy look on her face.

"I—an invitation?" she sputtered, trying helplessly to pull her hand away—he had it now, though, and held it fast, for no reason other than a need to satisfy an insatiable need to keep her off balance. "You know it is, otherwise why would I be doing any of this?" She tugged at his vice-like grip again, never breaking eye contact.

"Is that the reason you're carrying on so, Scarlett?" he asked, gravely. "Truly? You aren't clinging to the mere idea of something? Something from the past…something that never truly existed?"

"I never carry on about the past—you know that."

"Don't you?" His eyes darkened almost imperceptibly, his voice, dangerously soft and unassuming. "I never thought I'd be the one to have to remind you of Ashley Wilkes."

She gave him a look that would have stopped a weaker man cold.

"I would," she jerked her arm out of his grip, snapping the thread between them. "You always used to bring him up in conversation when you wanted to get something out of me. It seems to me," she finished, huffily, stomping out the door and into the humid Charleston night air. "That for the last few years, _you've_ thought more about him than _I _have."

He'd been forced to concede the point, and they spent the rest of the journey home in a reasonably comfortable silence. Carriage ride and disembarkment went smoothly, except for a minor incident involving Scarlett refusing to stop after she ran over a small animal and calling Rhett a "domineering varmint" for suggesting she should. The entire trip upstairs to Scarlett's room had been a non-event as well—no searing passion, no tightly coiled emotions, no bitter tears or vicious words. How the hell _had_ they ended up in bed together?

_Ah, yes…_

"What do you say to another round of cards, Rhett, darling?" Scarlett couldn't stop herself from yawning mid-sentence. She was tucked into bed now, and he was about to leave her for his own private domain in the study.

"No thank you, Mrs. Butler," he replied, not without humor. "I've had my fill of sportsmanly competition for the day. You, my dear, give new meaning to the words 'dealing with the devil.'"

"What on earth do you mean by that?"

"You _cheat_, Scarlett."

"Oh, as if you don't. Besides, I didn't hear you complaining at the time." Despite being incapable of keeping her eyes open, she still managed a bright and satisfied smile, entirely free of artifice.

"I was a bit preoccupied." _By what was in my lap._ "I'm going to leave you now, Scarlett."

She made a soft (and frankly, adorable) cooing noise in protest.

"Oh, Rhett—don't. That sofa is so nasty and small."

"I'm not going to sleep here." Half-heartedly, she batted her eyes at him.

"Don't you trust me?"

"Is such a question even worth asking aloud?"

His wife lost her flirtatious demeanor and her temper flared immediately.

"God's nightgown, what do you imagine is going to happen if you sleep here? Do you have so little control over yourself that…that…"

"I don't think you're trying to seduce me," Rhett interrupted, gently. "Even if you wanted to, you wouldn't be able to stay awake long enough to carry your plan to fruition. You're nodding off as we speak."

"No I'm not…" She tried desperately to stifle the yawn, but it was her afternoon catnap all over again.

"You'll be dead asleep in minutes, Scarlett," he carefully tucked her into bed more firmly. "I'm curious as to why my presence matters one way or another to you, honestly."

"I…well…" If she was bad at evasion and deceit when awake, the exhausted woman before him was even worse. "I…didn't…"

"Didn't what?"

"….Didn't want to be alone."

"The nightmare again?" He didn't want to get involved, had promised himself he would stay aloof, disinterested…but here he was. The man who planned to cut all ties in the state of Georgia because the very sight of a peach reminded him of her had his head practically planted on her pillow. He wanted to know the details of her _dreams_.

"It's worse now, because I know what I'm looking for and it's already gone…you're…gone."

She drifted off. Already, he could see a trace of fretfulness on her brow…and he knew he would not leave her alone tonight. His conscience—patched and frayed, bedraggled stray mongrel shivering in the village churchyard though it was—could not bear the idea of her waking up in the middle of the night alone.

…Which was how they'd wound up in the same bed together the following morning—an outcome Scarlett had been pushing for since her arrival in Charleston.

_Once again, Scarlett, you win without trying…or in this case, _in spite_ of trying._

She began to stir, finally, stretching in that feline way she always used when she believed no one to be watching. Clearly she'd gotten used to sleeping alone, for her face was arranged in the most unladylike expression he'd ever seen.

"Mmm…"

"Wake up, Scarlett," he prodded her gently, only to be swatted at like a troublesome insect. Never having let her irritation prevent him from doing something before, her amused husband persisted and finally succeeded in stirring her.

"Rhett…?" Despite being dazed and still half-asleep, the implication of his presence was not lost on her—Scarlett leapt up as if he'd laid a branding iron on her leg. "Rhett!"

"Guilty as charged, I'm afraid." She, realizing how she was draped around him like cheap holiday bunting, comically scrambled to extricate herself from her husband.

"What are—but you—why…?"

"You survived the night with your virtue very much in tact, don't worry."

"My virtue?" Despite her sleepiness and confusion, Scarlett still managed to irritably narrow her eyes. "What does virtue have to do with it? We're married, in case you've forgotten."

"Your self-respect, then, if not your virtue," he amended, blandly. He had never—well, perhaps not _never_, but rarely—seen Scarlett's countenance change from the contentment to crossness. It was really rather remarkable, he thought, as she rose from the bed and crossed the cramped room to the dressing table, wearing the floral printed coverlet as she would an elaborate fur. It didn't matter what she was doing, peacefully snoring with her mouth open, or huffing obnoxiously at a mirror—she always drew his eyes to her, without even trying.

"Why aren't you getting ready?" she snapped at him, after a minute or so of vainglorious pouting. He couldn't tell if the reflection now glaring daggers at him was more pleased or irritated by the innocence of their night together.

"I wasn't aware of an urgency to do so. It's only eight, and I must confess myself still recovering from the ordeal you put me though yesterday."

"_I_, put _you_ through? Ha!" She snatched up a puff from the table and began to powder her nose. "That isn't how I recall it at all."

"More proof of your infamous selective memory."

"Well, it doesn't matter anyway. You need to get ready if we're to catch the ferry."

"The ferry? And why, pray tell, would we be doing anything of the kind?"

"Why, because we're going out to Middleton Plantation today, of course."

"_What?_"

The Middletons were among the oldest and wealthiest families on the Ashley River. Their plantation house (rebuilt after the devastation of the War) was known for its exquisite gardens, grounds and stables. The Butlers were old friends of the Middletons, naturally—while he was in Charleston (and the family was abroad) he was keeping his own small but fine collection of horses there.

"Ms. Brewton's a real fine horsewoman, from what I gather—real good friends with the family, too," Scarlett said, casually, as she applied rouge—in her haste to get free from him she seemed to have forgotten to wash her face in the basin before slathering on face paint. "She was just dying to show it to me, only—"

"What are you up to, now, Scarlett?" He could practically see the cogs of her methodical brain turning with unsuppressed delight. There was nothing but a cloying simper plastered on her face when she tilted her head backwards to look him straight in the eye.

"Why do you always assume I am up to something?" she asked him, tartly, while running a brush through her hair.

"Prove me wrong and I'll stop assuming," was his dry retort. "I know you. I know the way your mind works. Undoubtedly you've gotten it into your head that today is the day you win me back by out-riding me—"

"And what if I do?" She raised her voice a fraction of a decibel. "You aren't backing out now, not after—"

"For God's sake, Scarlett—" Abandoning his place on the bed, he followed her to her spot in the corner of the room. Rather than address their issues in a calm and reasonable manner, the couple began a fruitless staring contest through the looking glass. "You're in no state to be jumping on the back of a horse."

"Who are you to tell me what I'm fit to do?" Scarlett demanded, suddenly hysterical, and she slammed the brush down on the table and spun simultaneously. "I'm as strong as I've ever been."

"Be careful of what you say, my pet," Rhett answered, staring straight into those fearless green eyes. "Such talk reeks of _desperation_. I would never doubt your physical capabilities…I only question whether you are in the right state of mind to be—shall I say—_gambling_ your future away."

Fury evident, she rose to brush past again—but this time he would not have it. His hand found her arm in an instant.

"Let go of me."

"_No_."

Their faces only a few inches apart, he could clearly see her eyes narrow with a derision that was positively feline in nature.

"Maybe I _am_ desperate—but if I am, it's because you've driven me to it." Scarlett struggled to get free from his grip. They were always fighting each other. Suddenly, inexplicably, he was angry with himself. "At least I'm not afraid. At least I don't run away from what I want like a damned _coward_."

"You shouldn't try to goad me." He spoke slowly and dangerously—not like a jungle cat, but a man, the seasoned big game hunter on the prowl. "It's obvious when you're doing it and it reflects well on neither of us."

"But it's the truth! You run, you _always _run and leave me behind." As she glowered fiercely at him, Rhett felt the familiar surge of electrifying power her anger emitted. "You've left me alone so many times before—and every time, _every time_, Rhett, all I can think about is either how much I hate you or…how much I…"

The end of the sentence was a foregone conclusion, and yet…she struggled to say it. She, Scarlett O'Hara, who had never been troubled by the inhibitions commonly associated with confessing love, stumbled over the words now. Romantic love had been a rosy, glittering dream for the woman he married—its joys sparkling, its tragedies sacred, far removed from the mundane and ugly sorrow of war, of death and destruction and decay and starvation…

He realized, with a jolt, that it was _because_ she had never truly understood it that it had been so easy in the past for her to proclaim undying adoration. Love had alternated between game and sacred ritual for her. When she had poured out her heart to him, given herself fully and completely to only _him_, what held him back was that he could not bring himself to believe she truly knew what it _meant_ to be in love.

The way he was holding her, gripping her by the shoulders suddenly felt brutish—even cruel. Amazed at how a tightly coiled emotional cocktail could be held together in such a frail package, he released her. She looked faint, and so he gingerly led her to the bed.

"I'm sorry." They sat down together. "This is exactly why I don't think you should be overexerting yourself."

"Do you hate me?"

Jarring—that was the only word for the question, for it came on the heels of a rather domestic remark on the state of her current wellbeing.

"…No, I don't hate you."

Sometimes, though, it is necessary to hear the obvious.

"But you don't love me, either," she said, faintly. "You pity me. I can tell you do—what am I saying? I _know_ you do. You told me yourself, the day you left me."

The parting words that had been fuzzy up until this point now sharpened, crystallized painfully in his memory to the point where he could see the scene play before his eyes, a cruel and relentless pantomime. Rhett had been honest with her that day for the first time, completely honest. At the time, he'd thought that was all he owed her.

As she sat next to him, the living, breathing testament to human survival that she was, it occurred to him that he was wrong. That was hardly all he owed her. The Rhett Butler of last September might've pretended that the decision to abandon her and her children had mattered to him at all.

"I can take anything from you but pity," she continued, rising from the bed and walking slowly to the small window that overlooked the cobblestone street below. "I'd rather you hated me."

Rhett suddenly wanted a cigar, a drink—anything to hold, to keep his hands busy, to posture with, to give him a purpose beyond reaching out and touching her. This room, this _damned_ room was too small, too confined. It was suffocating to be in this room with her, for she had always been a woman larger than the world she inhabited. When they were apart, in the long months since he had last seen her, he had almost forgotten that. In front of him, though, Scarlett Butler was no longer something to be left behind in Atlanta with his broken heart and Bonnie's grave. A mere arm's length away, she was vitally, sharply real, an _aegis_ essential to him. In front of his eyes was the person who had driven everything in his life since the second she stepped into it—her face obscured, the morning light streaming through the window, she ceased to be a mere woman.

She became _the _woman.

Rhett had never wanted to love this faceless woman, slender and dark haired and still disheveled from sleep. He hadn't wanted to need her, to need to have her so wholly and completely and _utterly_ that everything else in life was drab and colorless by comparison. He'd hated that need, hated needing something that badly, something as close to him as she was now—close enough to touch—and yet still, somehow, beyond his reach. Having to accept paltry substitutes had only left him with the empty ache of want.

It was here, in the smallest bedroom in his mother's house, that he began to understand the depth of his resentment. He hadn't let love drive him, but _resentment_—resentment of Scarlett, of the woman who could drive him to the ends of the earth and back if she wanted. He had hated that loss of control, the rush of undesirable emotion that one look from her could bring.

He had hated being in love.

He had also been afraid of it.

And so, Rhett Butler had spent a decade playing the part of the callous bastard to the one person he had cause to be the kindest to.

"Why?"

Still he could not see her face—that face that for so many years was an open book to him was obscured now. A horrible feeling, one that had been his boon companion for so many years, the fear that no matter how far he stretched out his hand she would still be out of reach, beyond his grasp—hit him like so many bad nights in the dives in Havana.

"Because…if you hated me, at least I'd know that you thought of me at all." Her voice was small and almost childlike. "At least I'd know that I matter to you."

His ambivalence, than, was what she feared. With a jolt, Rhett remembered the sting of her answer to his proposal—that she was _fond_ of him had hurt more than any declaration of pure loathing she'd thrown at him over the years had.

Hadn't he said he felt fondness for her the day Melanie died?

"I don't hate you," he finally spoke, lightly. "And nothing you do could ever induce me to hate you."

Scarlett, he knew, would not understand the underlying thread of his words—the ambiguity of the sentiments. It was not in her nature to understand subtlety or subterfuge—just as it was not in his nature to be completely honest, and never had been.

When she finally did turn around and face him, the flame of dogged determination danced in her eyes. He knew, almost instinctively, that it was _he_ who had lit that fire. It was not for Ashley, nor Tara, nor survival that Scarlett fought—but for him. Rhett didn't know how or why he was so certain of this; he only knew he _was._

The knowledge that there was no question in her mind of what she wanted, that she would barrel through all obstacles to attain her goal, just as she had once marched through a battlefield to get home—that terrified him. He'd seen her willingly offer to sell her body for a paltry 300 dollars, and then turn around and give herself to a man she felt neither love nor respect for because of that same fire.

It frightened him to think of what she might do to get what she wanted.

At the same time he feared for her, a strange warmth was spreading through his body, heart and mind alike. The detached air with which he had addressed her passionate protestations of love in September became a distant memory in the wake of this feeling.

That had been autumn—an autumn of death and decay, when the brittle, brown tenderness he felt for Bonnie had fallen to the ground and been crushed underfoot. Everything was dead. He could see what was coming then, and it was bleak winter.

But winter was gone. It was spring now, in the cramped room on the Battery, and the warmth that filled him was not tepid. The heat was of an unnatural spring, the kind of spring that taunts school children with the promise of a great and glorious summer—one of delicious possibilities and brilliant azaleas. He felt her love, freely given as his had never been. Her love had remained green and strong and as straightforward as a Georgia pine did through the winter.

"I could never hate you," he repeated, softer this time. "No matter what you did."

Her eyes were clear, her jaw stubbornly set—the spitting image of her father—and he knew he was not lying.

"Just you wait." Scarlett's eyes were lush, greener, more dancing with life than he remembered. He imagined her reaction to being told her eyes conjured up images of the vernal equinox. "You'll see what I can do."

Of course, adversarial woman that she was, she took his last words as a challenge. Burdened with so much at such a young age, Scarlett was now almost incapable of turning off her combative spirit, her need to fight. That was probably why she thought the best way to win back her husband was to beat him at his own game.

This would be Scarlett's last stand.

"I'm sure I will."

**There's not much I can say except…well, that the only thing better than one sunny, funny summer is two? Hard to believe that something that started as (literally) an idle idea in the shower after I received the prompt is now nearly a year old. Thanks to everyone for your continued interest in my frankly bizarre story—the encouragement means a lot to me. Bug, this one was for you—and I didn't even make you beta it, look at that! Last challenge is next chapter, and then an epilogue, of course…fingers crossed for completion this summer.**


	8. Running

Scarlett and Rhett spoke very little to each other on the rambling ferry trip down the Ashley River. Luckily, they were spared the halting and awkward conversation of their late married life by Sally's presence. She was with them, and spent the greater part of two hours expounding upon several points of interest that they passed—who used to live where, and when those families of such supreme prominence came to Charleston—the only thing Sally left out was how much the people were worth. Funny, thought Rhett, for it was probably the only thing his wife was honestly interested in knowing.

Rhett let Sally's drawling voice wash over him while he contemplated the situation he was in. They were both in. That she had placed him in. He gritted his teeth. That he had put _himself_ in.

Agreeing to play Scarlett's game had been a mistake. He'd known that at the time—proving that he either hadn't gotten over his youthful penchant for risk-taking or he had a subconscious death wish. Rhett conceded that he'd always known it was a mistake. How momentous a mistake though…that he was still puzzling out.

It was so like Scarlett to come crashing back into his life in the most disruptive manner possible. Since they'd first met, that was what the two of them had always done—each reentering the other's sphere of power in increasingly dramatic and often volatile ways. Once, this combative dance had almost had fatal results. By comparison, what had occurred between them over the last few days was almost…comical. Farcical.

It was a dangerous path to wander down with her, however stimulating the results. Their heated _exchange_ in the bar the previous night was proof of that. Scarlett was still Scarlett, he was still himself and…whatever had been between them still existed, though what it had become was still not clear to him. He had wondered what life would be like without Scarlett, what he would fill his time with, if he could even build something in a universe without the driving force that had propelled him for over a decade. Now he had his answer.

It hadn't taken long. Eight months tirelessly purging his system of her, eight months spent throwing himself into mindless and trivial pursuits, domestic and civilized, that neither challenged nor intrigued him, eight months of family and honor and duty and tedium…eight months without those green eyes…

Eight months apart, and it hadn't even taken her a week to make him _hers_ again.

Rhett's brain, as shrewd as it had ever been, worked over the implication of that simple fact. It only mattered, he decided, after contemplating the manner for some time, if _she _knew. Scarlett, if nothing else, understood _power_ and how to wield it. The reason he'd frustrated her to no end when they were married was because she did not know how to exert control over someone over whom she believed she had no power. The strength of her personality had always carried the day for her. Melanie, Pitty, Frank and even (or especially) Ashley could not stand up to her, because, right or wrong, there was simply more _of _her than there would ever be of them.

There were only two people in the world who had the strength of will to truly challenge her: himself…and Mammy. Mammy didn't fear Scarlett the way others did, perhaps because she took her charge for granted, the way any parent would. Maybe she still thought of Scarlett as a spoiled little girl who needed a firm hand…or maybe it was just that she understood, the way he did.

Sometimes he wondered if he understood her _too_ well.

Because he made Scarlett believe that she was nothing more than an amusing diversion for him, he'd been able to conceal from her the weapon she too often wielded dangerously well.

"There she is, Scarlett—the Middleton Plantation."

The women sitting across from him in the riverboat smiled—not with girlish delight or wistful admiration for a once lavish estate—but with a hardened and desperate resolve that nearly broke his heart. It troubled him, as well, for desperate was the face he had seen her wear far too often. Desperation did not become her.

"It's a real shame about the house, isn't it Rhett?" Sally said as the ferry lazily floated to the dock. "It was a beautiful old place, nearly a hundred years old, before they burned it to the ground."

"I don't imagine I'll lose much sleep over it. John Middleton fared better than most during the war. He always did know which way the wind would blow…"

"Takes a scalawag to know one," his wife interjected, faintly. She was drinking in the plantation—in as much as it was one, anymore—as if she'd never seen anything quite like it in her life. Perhaps she hadn't.

"I know. It's why I always liked him. You can't help liking people who are like you, don't you agree, Sally?"

Sally's forehead pursed, as she seriously considered the question.

"I'm not sure," she finally answered, before the ghost of a smile flitted across her face. "I've never met anyone like me before."

Middleton Plantation was a ruin, but it was the sort of property that, even ruined, had grace. Just as the Parthenon became statelier with age and neglect, the plantation and grounds of this once-great family clung fiercely to an aggrandized notion of itself. Though the house had been burned down during the war—as had every house on the Ashley, bar one—the gardens had been restored to their original opulent spectacle. Great live oaks littered the grounds, Spanish moss hanging from them like some monument to a forgotten age.

"Did you come here often, when you lived in Charleston?" Scarlett asked, as he helped her and Sally off of the ferry and onto the rickety dock.

"Often enough. There used to be a large Georgian house over the ridge. I would have found it completely dull except for the stables."

"You liked riding horses growing up?"

Sally laughed.

"Honey, don't you know anything about the man you married?"

"I—" She hesitated, awkward and stilted. "I don't suppose I know as much as I should."

The other woman obviously immediately regretted asking the question—a fact unusual in and of itself, for Rhett had never seen Sally Brewton ever take back what she had said in public. He cared less than she did. Rhett had rarely regretted Scarlett's lack of interest in his childhood, except in as far as it was representative of her lack of interest in _him._ As he glanced at the woman in his peripheral vision, he was struck by her expression. It was one of genuine regret.

He wondered, not for the first time, if he was making a mistake with her.

His inner ponderings were interrupted by a small party of servants met them and escorted the group to the restored house. As they chatted familiarly on the short walk to the house, Rhett found himself intrigued by the camaraderie that had sprung up between Sally and Scarlett. He would have never pegged them as a pair to get along—mostly because women so rarely liked Scarlett at _all_. And yet, he could see an easy, if not particularly deep rapport between them when they sat down for their meal.

_The Last Super_.

Scarlett was, in spite of everything, more at ease here than she had been for most of her stay in Charleston—a stay that had admittedly consisted of her assuming a bizarre double identity. Sitting at the table with Sally and him, though, was neither the affected 'lady' who'd inserted herself into his mother's tea circle, nor the furious wildcat who'd nearly scratched out his eyes the day before. Before him was a middle ground between the two, a deeply passionate woman tempered by age, wisdom, and the hardship of life.

She was not the woman he'd wanted her to be when they married. Then Rhett had desired her obsessive and exuberant lust for life directed at one aim: himself. Nothing else mattered—not what they did or what others thought—only that he could make her love him with the intensity that he loved her.

She _had_ loved him the way he loved her—that was the problem. Neither of them could admit, acknowledge, or act upon it. Those feelings festered and poisoned their marriage, up until the point where there was nearly nothing worth saving in it.

The Scarlett of today was not that woman. She wasn't asking for all of him. She hadn't demanded he give his whole heart and soul to her, and then thrown a tantrum when he couldn't deliver, as she had to a different man at a garden party out of a fairy tale so long ago.

All she was asking for was time.

No, indeed, this was not the woman he had wanted for so long.

"You ready, honey?" Sally brought him abruptly out of his reverie.

"As ready as I'll ever be." He sighed. "Lead the way."

"Is everything understood?"

A half hour later, as they stood on a grassy knoll overlooking the vast estate, Rhett wondered what answer he would elicit if he responded to the question honestly. The idea of responding to what was most likely meant as a rhetorical question literally appealed to him. He wanted to say, "No, I don't understand. I don't understand why we're taking a route through a swamp when there's a perfectly good dirt track right over _there_. I don't understand why my wife came up with this ridiculous contest, and I don't understand why I agreed to it. I don't understand why she thinks blackmail and extortion are the best ways to win me back, and I don't understand why it's _working_."

"Perfectly, Sally."

He felt an instinctive prickling at the back of the neck. As if by second nature, he turned his gaze to Scarlett. Standing only a few feet away, she fixed him with as intent a look as he had ever seen. Her eyes flickered—dangerous, deeply, passionate—before she noticed with a nervous start that he was looking back. Their eyes met for a brief moment, but a

A single strand of dark hair came undone, brushing the side of her cheek, before she quickly tucked it behind one ear. His wife flushed and turned away quickly. He saw in her something familiar, something he had seen before—the look of a woman in love. That thought filled him with a painfully familiar rush of desire and something else. It was something Rhett recognized

"You're awfully quiet, Mrs. Butler. You haven't answered the question. Did hear Sally's explanation of our—ah—dénouement?"

"Our what?"

He repeated his sentiments more gently the second time.

"Did you understand what she said?"

"Of course I did. This was my idea, wasn't it?"

"Well, if that's settled, than all that's left is to pick your poison." Sally interjected. "Rhett, you've got more than one horse here—"

"Tex," he cut her off. "Have them bring out Tex."

Tex was a horse he'd taken a shine to since the moment he aquired him. The story of how he'd gotten the feisty thoroughbred was an interesting one. As soon as the ink was dry on the paperwork, Tex's original owner had sold shop and moved west, to Texas. For reasons he'd never explained, John Canney wanted to cut all ties to his home. Tex was the last of his horses to sell. He'd been the only thing holding Canney back, supposedly—at least that was what Rhett was told.

He knew Canney was lying. If John Canney had really wanted to start fresh as badly as he claimed, he wouldn't have spent 6 months trying to sell a runty horse with a middling pedigree.

He'd have shot it.

Rhett had felt a strange affinity for the creature since he'd first clapped eyes on him.

"You know what I want, Sally." Scarlett said, with an unnerving calm that, in all honesty, reminded Rhett more of himself than it did of his wife. Had this unflappable, cold calculation been her companion and bedfellow the years they'd known each other? A surprising amount of self-loathing filled him at the idea.

Several servants entered, one leading Tex, the other three leading what he could only surmise was Scarlett's horse. It was a glorious bay Arabian stallion, nearly 15 hands tall.

"What do you think?" Her eyes roved over his face manically, searching for envy or approval or fear…perhaps all three.

It _was _a beautiful horse. As Scarlett explained the creature's pedigree, with her usual businesslike sense of worth—price and pedigree, in this case, he allowed the words to wash meaninglessly over him. It was a beautiful creature, alright, and undoubtedly fast. That was why Scarlett had had it shipped from God knows where (and spent God knows how much of his money in the process.) He had a decidedly fierce look in its eyes. The animal conveyed untapped power in his gate, more, it seemed, than either Scarlett or the creature itself knew what to do with.

Such animals were rarely easy to control. Rhett didn't like it.

"I'd have never thought it was possible to buy a gaudy horse before I met you." She frowned in annoyance at his usual cool flippancy, still not really understanding that it was a smokescreen for his real feelings, turbulent and unyielding. "I assume you've played with your shiny new toy, at least."

"I don't suppose that it's any of your concern."

_ She hasn't_.

His pulse almost imperceptibly quickened.

"The jockey is almost more important than the horse, you see."

"You needn't speak to me as though I was a _child_, Rhett! I know about horses, I've been riding them since I was a girl—and I wouldn't be riding him if I couldn't!"

"If you're certain."

"I _am_! God's nightgown."

"Then I have no reason to doubt."

He did have reason to worry, though. Scarlett had, in typical fashion, picked the flashiest conceivable horse on the North American continent—the one that seemed a surefire winner. Victory was on her mind, more than the road she'd have to travel to get there. He, paradoxically, was more afraid of her losing control of the animal than he was of losing this contest.

"Are you certain you wish to go through with this?"

"I'd have never taken you for a coward, Rhett Butler."

"If you never took me for a coward, than I never took you for a fool."

He mounted Tex, eschewing the help of servants. The inevitability of this final confrontation filled him with dread. Even if he surrendered to her now, acceded to her demands…the inevitability of this was still unstoppable. They neither one of them could be part of a story without a climax, however narratively improbable it was.

And somehow, he knew that she wanted the chance to fight him almost more than she wanted to win.

"Scarlett…"

What could Rhett say to her that he hadn't already told her, said a hundred times before this moment? His wife turned to look at him from atop what appeared to him to be a frankly monstrous stallion (was that what made her look so small?) and he was at a loss. As her eyes met his, he wondered if she had inferred the only thing left that remained unsaid.

"Good luck."

A pistol shot. They were off.

Neck-and-neck, the Butlers barreled forward, past the fence that separated the paddock from the rest of the grounds, down the dirt path, past the main house, past the barns, _past everything._

It was _freeing_, somehow—Rhett felt free. For the first time since Bonnie's death, the weight of guilt and shame miraculously lifted from his shoulders. The thrill of the chase was stronger than any of that, at least today.

Tex and he, Scarlett and he—they were flying. This was simple, this was what he and Scarlett were made for, what they had always been made for. As he raced along the intricate roads of the plantation, a memory came back to him from his early childhood. It was of a far simpler time, when he would run alongside the banks of the Ashley River, racing the boys who were his friends. He loved to run, because it was so liberating. He was always the leader. The other children would run with him until they were tired, when they'd scamper off to the warmth and safety of their parents' homes and arms, and he would be left alone. That was when he ran by himself. Rhett was always the last one left, the last to become winded, the last to give up.

Now, in his memory he could see someone else, someone next to him, running alongside him. A little girl, dark-haired and lithe, barefoot and brazen, laughing too loudly—

He would always run, he knew that. Running was his way. But he'd never needed to run alone.

His whole life he'd been waiting for someone who could keep up.

The boy and girl of his mind's eye tumbled in the grass—a flash of large, green eyes, framed with thick lashes—they were fighting about who had won, tustling on the cool grass of early summer. Funny how children always fought like that, all muddy elbows and grass stained knees and bristling insults. What the hell did it matter who had won the race when they had so much fun _racing _it?

Scarlett pulled ahead of him as they entered the forested section of their route.

Her horse was faster than his, and more powerful—and God, did she look magnificent astride him, her eyes trained ahead, never straying from her ultimate goal.

An odd calmness fell over him, and he began to ride intuitively, not thinking, only doing—feeling. It gave his brain the chance to ponder something that had been lingering at the back of his mind for several days, ever since this entire 'experience' had begun.

Why _was_ Scarlett so determined to have him back? He'd told her many months before that he saw no reason to put the broken pieces of their lives back together, that it would still be broken, and nothing could change that.

Scarlett had an even greater survival instinct than his own—and realer chance of happiness than he'd ever had. There'd been a time when he'd bitterly chocked it up to her simplicity, but he could frankly appraise himself now, and knew that wasn't it at all. It was his own weakness, his own shrinking from life and responsibility and pain that made _him_ useless to _her_, dead weight. Scarlett would heal—or she could. She had spent the last few days trying desperately to prove to him that he needed her, but her ingenuity and cleverness had done nothing but prove the opposite. She didn't need him—but when he beat her, she'd realize she could live without him.

_ They_ weren't broken—_they_ had never really been a _they_, and so they couldn't be. It was him that lay scattered on the floor, shattered into a million pieces. He was barely able to muster the energy to pick up the fragments, let alone put them back together again.

_ He_ was the broken one. The magnitude of this hit him like a ton of so many proverbial bricks.

Rhett spurred Tex on, suddenly imbued with the raw energy that had propelled him to wealth and success and _fame_ in his younger days. He was angry that he'd become complacent; that he'd allowed himself to hasten his road to the grave through sluggish self-pity. He had believed at one time that their life together was not worth living. It was a potboiler of momentous portions, a drama on the grand scale of the Greeks—and neither of them should have had the strength to go on. Now he wondered if it was only that he that _convinced_ himself he lacked the strength, and that angered him, for he had always looked on such fatalism with disgust.

His wife sensed that he was shortening the gap between them, pulling up on her shoulder, and so she flattened herself in the saddle so as not to give him an inch.

It was then that they both ceased to think.

Scarlett and Rhett had spent most of the time they'd known each other in a battle of some kind or another, of word and deed, figurative…and usually not as literal this. When they were fighting, they often did or said things they had cause to regret later. This came from a mutual predilection for rashness where the other was concerned. If it were any other day, and he was facing any other woman, Rhett would have seen the supreme folly in bringing a horse to full gallop in an unfamiliar wooded area, and pulled up.

The finish line was in sight, though—just beyond the final clearing, a hundred yards from where he was. It would be the end to everything, one way or another—she saw it too, for Scarlett was testing the limit of her stead's power, the great black brute looking like the devil's own horse as it flew across the marshy land in tandem with his own.

It only took a split second for everything to change.

Her stallion was charging at such a great speed there was no way she could have done anything about that branch—could have steered him away—

He realized as he crossed the finish line that there was no longer a black blur in the corner of his eye.

_ Scarlett!_

It had happened so quickly he _hadn't realized—_

"Scarlett—_Scarlett!"_

She lay in a brutally familiar heap on the grass—at the base of crimson stairs—next to a fallen vaulting pole—

_ Please, God no—_

"Wake up, God damn you—wake up!"

Any deadness left inside him, the last remnants of the weight that had crushed all his ability to feel left him, sheer terror the likes of which he had never known swiftly taking its place. She had to be alive, she just _had_ to be, the bitch—didn't she know that he needed her? His world simply could not exist without her, she was essential to him, her cruel and deadly claws held the lifeblood of his heart, his _soul_—

"Rh—Rhett?"

Green eyes fluttered open—his amazingly beautiful, amoral little wife was _alive_! Rhett did not know whether to scream for the doctor, curse the heavens, weep with relief or dance for joy. He felt himself torn between some combination of them all. He settled for asking her rather hysterically if she was injured.

"I'm fine, Rhett—" She sat up, as if to demonstrate the point. Immediately he seized her by the shoulders and forced her to lie back on the ground. "_Rhett!_" she squawked, quite indignant. "I've just fallen off my horse, it isn't the first time—"

"Be quiet, you fool—and for God's sake, stay still. Don't you know you could've died?" He could not believe the gall of her, when she had fallen off of that blasted animal and miraculously come out without a scratch. A woman he had thought dead not more than a minute ago had no right to be so fit.

_ She at least ought to have the decency to swoon a bit. _

Sally ran over, concern etched over her face. To his great surprise, Julia Ashley followed her, the older women's gait surprisingly spry for a woman of her age. Why was she here? Of course, she had wanted to see the ending of their contest, had, like so many others, taken a perverse pleasure in it.

"Scarlett, child, are you alright?"

"I'm _fine_, Sally—" Scarlett groused, unsuccessfully fighting her way past her husband's embargo on moving. "I don't know _why_ everyone assumes I'm ailing, when all I did was take a little spill—"

"The fact that you were going over thirty miles an hour notwithstanding." Rhett pointed out, acerbically. She was alright, he told himself. She was alive. For the minute when he had not thought it so, when he had believed her…the sheer blind terror of it frightened him beyond measure. The only way to bring himself back from that precipice was to verbally harangue her, and he frankly didn't care if a couple of middle-aged society women were witness to it.

"I know I was—that was the point. Did I win?"

There was a short but profound silence while Scarlett took in where exactly she had landed.

"…At least tell me Rhett didn't."

Sally hesitated just long enough for Scarlett to know the truth. At this realization, she uttered a string of rather surprising profanities that would have, if not her father, at least had her dear late mother rolling in the grave. Her husband almost laughed aloud at how refreshing and _her_ such a flagrant display of vulgarity was. She was an original, that was for certain.

"Well, we know her tongue isn't injured." Ms. Ashley had the keen ability to recognize when levity was necessary to cool heads in an otherwise humorless state of affairs. Rhett laughed, more hysterically than he was naturally prone to. Unthinking, he also gripped her a little more tightly.

"I'm sorry," Sally answered, trying to a stifle a laugh at the ridiculous picture the Butlers made, the husband trying delicately (and desperately) to keep his erstwhile wife from stomping off in disgust or elbowing him in the stomach—whichever occurred to her first. "He crossed the finish line right as he realized you'd fallen."

"Will you stop thrashing about like an eel, Scarlett? I'm trying to check if you have any broken ribs."

"Oh, let me go! Don't you think I'd _know_ it if I had anything broken—"

"No, I'm really _not_ certain that you'd know it. Now, for once in your life, will you listen to what I tell you to do and _do_ it?"

"Don't you _dare_ tell me what to do, Rhett Butler—I won't." The words were said as if the very idea of obeying him was a violation of her most deeply-held principles. They struck a cord with him, though. It was probably not an intended reminder. Alas, as is so often the case in life, Scarlett inadvertently triggered something that she did not want to trigger: in this case, a memory.

It is said that in times of extreme adversity in life, we come out on the other end wishing for, if not an important lesson imparted to us from our follies, than a sense of vindication, of divine retribution against our oppressors and enemies. Rhett Butler was both blessed and cursed to be someone who always either received a healthy share of one, or a debilitating dosage of the other. Luckily for him, this particular trial would garner him the rewards of retribution—but not of a divine nature.

It was at that moment that he remembered the stipulations of the agreement between his wife and himself, and they included a particular reward if he won. The image of Scarlett making her bed and lying in it struck him with all the power that the perverse triple-entendre of the phrase evoked. Yes, absolution _was_ sweet.

"Actually, I believe you will, my pet. _Truly_."

**Well, all I can say is that it's been awhile—and, obviously, it's been quite a journey. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me the year and a half that this story has been in progress—your support and encouragement has really meant a lot. Really. I'm not just saying that, I swear. Epilogue to follow! We're almost done. *waves pom-poms***


	9. The Epilogue: Paying Up

Three days later, the following letter appeared in the _News and Courier:_

_To Whom It May Concern:_

_It is with the greatest regret that I write to this publication, withdrawing my public challenge of Mr. Rhett K. Butler of Charleston, etc. The circumstances of our written exchanges being of particular public interest, I will attempt to set the public record straight as to the nature of my own motives in this regrettable affair of honor. _

_Conscience, as well as the unforeseeable events of the last several days, force me to admit that my intentions in this matter were far from pure. I acted in the interest of separating that esteemed gentleman from his wife. She, however, being a lady of the highest moral caliber, a lady whose devotion and affection towards her husband could only by rivaled by her demureness and womanly grace—_

"I hate you, Rhett Butler."

Rhett looked up from the open evening edition before him, and smiled, placidly.

"I trust you enjoyed yourself at Mrs. Randolph's sewing circle."

"I have never been with a group of stodgy—" One glove flew past his ear. "—old peahens—" Another soared magnificently over his head. "—I hated more."

"Well, that's a shame." Nonplussed, her husband turned his attention back to his paper. "She's a good friend of my mother's, and she's really taken a liking to you. Tomorrow you're going to join her for her embroidery-making benefit for the Children of the Confederacy."

"That's it—I'm leaving."

Furiously she began to pack, throwing dress after frock after gown into one of her many open oversized trunks. Rhett, with his usual prosaic nonchalance, read three full sections of the newspaper before the furious little noises she made while doing this task roused him.

"Where, may I ask, do you intend on going?" He did not even blink at the four or five balled-up sets of French lingerie that whizzed past his head and into a suitcase.

"Atlanta, Tara…anywhere but here!"

"Stop that, Scarlett."

"Why should I?" she retorted, baldly, from inside her _toilette_, knee-deep in slippers and shoes.

"Because it is extremely disruptive of my reading—besides which, it is pointless, as you aren't going."

She stopped rooting around for the other red-diamond-patterned shoe immediately.

"What on earth do you mean?"

"The terms of our agreement were that if I won—which, I hasten to remind you, I _did_—that you would do as I said, until such time as I released you from the matrimonial bonds you nearly killed yourself attempting to retain."

One slipper, hanging limply from her hand, fell to the floor.

"I thought you wanted me to leave. A few days ago you couldn't wait to see the back of me."

"A few days ago you were trying rather aggressively to seduce me—alas, our world is a changeable one," he replied, folding up his newspaper with a sigh..

"I won't be toyed with, Rhett."

"Do I detect the scent of hypocrisy?" Her husband smiled up at her, grimly. "Has the puppet master discovered that she dislikes someone else holding the strings?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You had no apparent moral qualms about manipulating me, pet."

"You can't compare it, Rhett. Don't try to."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"I was…" Scarlett twisted the glove in her hand, biting her lip with what appeared to be a woman's approximation of guilt. "I was trying to save my marriage."

"I can never win with you. You devote your considerable energy to getting me back (which I resist) and the second I relent, you'd rather be somewhere else."

"This isn't what I imagined!" she sputtered, indignantly. "This isn't what marriage is supposed to be—me at your beck and call, doing whatever you want me to just because I'm your _wife_."

Rhett's eyebrows involuntarily rose skyward.

"I believe most marriages are rather like this, actually."

"Well…_believing_ something is true doesn't make it so."

"A succinct summation of my own theological views, but a little beside the point."

Glowering, she flung the glove at his face. Rhett caught it, laughing, evidently impressed that she'd lasted this long without throwing anything heavier at him.

"You shouldn't work yourself into a fit of womanly distress over this, Mrs. Butler," He continued, speaking to the woman who had crossed her arms and turned to the wall. "You know your pouting rarely has any effect on me—"

"Why are you doing this, Rhett?" she cut him off, sounding altogether lost and overwhelmed. "Why don't you just divorce me?"

"…Is that what you want?"

"It's what _you've_ wanted, practically since you married me in the first place and…" The words caught. "And it's better than sitting here, waiting for you to get…tired of this." She walked slowly over to the window and stared out onto the dismal street below.

"Come back over here, Scarlett," he ordered, gently.

"No."

"If you'll just—" Rhett took one step towards her, hands outstretched in peace.

"I don't want to," she repeated, emphatically. "And if you take another step towards me, I shall scream."

"What for? Do you think you need a protector, Scarlett?" Rhett laughed at the flash of old temper that crossed her face, wiping away the unbecoming pensiveness. "You're far and away the strongest person in _this_ house. Now come _here_," he repeated, betraying to some degree his amused exasperation. "Just think of your poor mother's soul in heaven, should you fail to honor your sworn oath—"

"Oh—you—you _would_ keep bringing that up," she huffed, reluctantly walking over to the chair where he was sitting down. "I don't even think you believe in souls, you godless—ah!"

But Rhett pulled her into his lap, effectively laying aside any further accusations of heathenism.

"Let go of me!"

"Not until you answer one question."

She slapped the rogue hand that crept suspiciously up her waist.

"If you don't let me go this _instant_, Rhett Butler…"

"Answer me this one question, truthfully, Scarlett, and I'll release you from any and all…grips, you believe I have you, er, held fast in."

"Ask the question, then," she impatiently twisted his arm, face flushed with anger and (he hoped) a more…delicate emotion. Though, truthfully, it was difficult to imagine the softer passions holding sway over a woman who was quite prepared to bite his hand if he didn't let go of her.

Scarlett's face was very near his. She hadn't been this close to him in years. He hadn't really _looked_ at her, really scene her—in even longer. Rhett could see tiny, almost imperceptible lines in her face, creases framing her delicate and impossibly green eyes. That mulish Irish chin of hers was no longer perfectly smooth—there had been death, hunger, grief and pain to mar it.

Funny. The idea that she could age at all—that she was _human_—had scarcely crossed his mind more than half a dozen times in all the years he'd known her. She was, though. The creature trembling in his arms now could not more human.

"…Do you still love me?"

The face that he had just been examining, the face that he had studied when it was scheming, alight with the pleasures of a dance, viciously angry, blissfully asleep…went completely blank.

"Let me loose." Immediately she struggled, but he held her fast.

"I told you to answer me truthfully, Scarlett."

"You are the most insufferable, arrogant man that ever—"

"Leave the editorializing to your burgeoning letter-writing career and tell me—" He tightened his hold almost imperceptibly. "Are you still in love with me?"

Her nostrils flared, her eyes flashed—Rhett felt as though he was holding a raw flame in his arms.

"What's it to you, anyway? I'm tired of begging—I won't, ever again, not to a man who doesn't love me—no matter how much I…no matter how I…"

He was there, looming in front of her, his face as dark and swarthy as an Indian Prince's. Dark eyes were boring into hers, searching with a frightening intensity she had known only one night in her life.

"No matter what, Scarlett?" She felt dizzy, as though she had had one too many glasses of champagne and Rhett was the only solid thing in the room. Perhaps it was just an excuse she invented to explain why she was leaning into him, gripping him so tightly, allowing her hands to (of their own accord) to lay flat on his warm chest.

"No matter how much I…well…you know."

He did know. He was so certain of it now that the words need not be spoken. She stared up at him, dazed and bewildered and yet so…defiant. She looked like he had felt for the last twelve years.

"For a long time I didn't think that you did," he broke the silence, finally. "I didn't think that you were capable of it.

"I realize now that my logic was flawed. You, Scarlett, with your famous displays of unbridled passion—I think that if there is anything you are incapable of being, it is loveless."

"Rhett, what are you _on _about?"

"I, on the other hand," he pressed on, ignoring her. "Have always been a reluctant participant in the game of love. Love and I have been strange bedfellows. I'm afraid that you have suffered the most from this sad fact."

"I don't know what you mean."

"I've always prided myself on being a risk-taker, Scarlett. There's nothing that can be gained in gambling without taking risks. Love is…the most high-stake game of all. The fact that I wasn't willing—wasn't able to take that chance—that's why the game was a net loss."

"Will you stop rattling on about cards and tell—"

"—I was afraid to tell you that I loved you before I was certain that you loved me. For nearly a decade I lied to you, and because I was a coward, I lost you."

"You haven't lost me!" Green eyes swam in front of him, helplessly trying to provide comfort. Tentatively, Scarlett reached out and placed one of her own tiny hands over his. The action was a small one, but he felt it keenly. The maternal soothing that had come to Melanie Wilkes so naturally was, in Scarlett's hands, a clumsy tool at best. Still, the fact that she was _trying_…

"I did, Scarlett. You couldn't see it, at the time—perhaps you never will—but I lost you. The love I felt for you—such that it was—had brought nothing but misery to us both." He laughed, harshly. "I suppose I thought I had gambled away any chance of our being happy."

"Oh, but Rhett—it wasn't all bad. There was, well, our honeymoon, and the first year we were married…and…and Bonnie—"

The word hung out, a word that was hopes and dreams and fleeting memories—shared, unknowingly, by the two souls in the room.

"When you speak that way, Scarlett," he said, finally. "I think you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

"Really, Rhett? Truly?" Even in a somber mood, she could not hide the way she sparkled at his words, as if every thoughtless remark, every pointed barb had never taken place. Years before he would have accused her of thoughtless vanity, but age had given him a more liberal perspective on Scarlett's vivacity.

"Truly—though, not being a sentimental man, I didn't always think so."

"I remember," Scarlett sniffed. "You said you met prettier girls when you were in England at the end of the war."

"What a memory you have for personal slights—almost as acute as your memory for compliments." He paused to allow for her inevitable huff. "Of course, my views on the matter have changed. When I told you that, I was only madly infatuated with you. I was still capable of viewing you with some degree of impartiality." He gently cupped her cheek. "Now when I look at you I see a face that cannot hope to compare with any other. I'm blinded, I suppose."

It had all been so beautiful and heartfelt, but Scarlett was no fool, and she could tell a jibe was coming. An ironic turn in the middle of a heartfelt confession seemed made for him—much to her annoyance.

"How silly, Rhett—" she interrupted, annoyed. "When you know as well as I do that you can still shoot as straight as an Indian!"

"Blinded by _love_, you obtuse creature."

Rhett relished in her surprise. Shock sat quite fetchingly on her high cheekbones and brilliant eyes. Then, to his astonishment, instead of widening in understanding and brightening in delight, her eyes narrowed in suspicious shrewdness.

"What do you mean?"

"I think that's rather obvious—"

"I don't believe you."

At first he couldn't believe _her_—after all that, denying what she apparently wanted so desperately to hear—but the stubborn glint in Scarlett's eye quickly convinced him otherwise. Sighing, as if he was the long-suffering husband of a more pedestrian ilk, he forced himself to ask the inevitable question.

"Why not?"

"If you really loved me," She lightly turned her head, giving him a mouthful of hair and a prime view of her perfectly proportioned neck. "You would have come with me three days ago. You wouldn't have made me go through he—Halifax and back to get you."

_Made _you_ go through it?_

"Perhaps I prefer to love from afar."

"You? Ha!" She sniffed, primly. "You're far too boorish."

"Still the varmint in your eyes, pet? I'll admit it isn't my preferred _modus operandi_, but I can play the Don Quixote when I want to—I pined for you for_ years_ from afar, after all."

"Oh, honestly, Rhett," she snorted. "You were always calling on me, giving me gifts, driving me about, even when I was married to Frank. Everyone in town said you were a hound sniffing 'round Pitty's door."

Normally he would have pointed out that she had been an entirely willing, even encouraging participant in this whirl of Atlanta intrigue, but he knew clarifying would have been a fruitless exercise.

"A hound?" Rhett pulled her closer—dangerously close, and he felt her heart rate accelerate in tandem with his own. "How inadequate. I hope you defended my honor—or at least my reputation."

"No, indeed," she said, breathily, with noticeably less conviction. "I think they were—quite right."

"No, you don't. You don't think they went far enough. I've heard you call me much worse to my face, you must have been annoyed they were too gently bred to abuse me as—" He paused a fraction of a second, searching for the perfect word. "—_colorfully_ as you do."

She twisted out of his arms, which to her surprise (and annoyance) had gone slack. Rhett laughed, darkly and richly.

"Perhaps you're right, my dear—I don't like to play the chaste lover. But then again, I don't think you've ever really minded." Without warning, she found the pull of something on her wrist—the same thing that had been pulling on her since the day that she flung a piece of china over his head and swore he wasn't a gentleman.

The kiss came so suddenly that she could not finish her exclamation—for there was Rhett, holding her possessively, his lips on hers, and as much as she wanted to hate him, to push him away and holler at him for his extraordinary liberties—she could not. He was power, power incarnate, and she knew the second their lips touched that she had him, totally and utterly, and that realization only increased the ferocity of her hunger.

Her response sent a familiar rush through him, and it was as though a dam were breaking—the desire and love and passion and anger and need he'd always felt, mingling and banging against his consciousness with all the subtlety of a freight train—all this, mixed with the intoxicating security that Scarlett O'Hara felt at _least_ as much as he did.

"Rhett—" She pulled away, needing air. "I—"

"Be quiet and listen, Scarlett," he ordered, and the raw passion in his voice silenced her. "By God, I'm going to say my piece, even if it kills me.

"Do you have any idea what it felt like, to see you fall off that damned horse? Do you have the smallest inkling of—all I could think about, all I could see was you falling down those godforsaken stairs. Knowing what it felt last time to almost lose you—what it _did_ feel like to lose Bonnie—I…"

Scarlett had never heard him so incoherent. The day he left he had been so cool and collected, emotionally distant but…maddeningly elegant. That was his way. Even ten scotches to the wind he could quote Shakespeare. It astounded her that a commonplace fall such as hers could affect him so.

"Oh, Rhett—you didn't think I was going to…"

"I did," he answered, grimly. "I know you find the idea ridiculous. You're young, and you've survived so much…perhaps you think yourself invincible. I used to think it of myself. Once you've looked death in the face as many times as I have…Those brief moments, thinking I might lose you, were proof enough that I can't, not ever again."

"You love me, Rhett?" If any of Scarlett's schoolgirl rivals could have seen her in this moment, they wouldn't have believed it. Scarlett O'Hara, having any doubt of the love of a man.

He let out the self-deprecating laugh of a man, at long last, bested.

"Damn it all, Scarlett, I _do_."

"And you—" She hesitated. "You want to live with me? As man and wife…truly?"

His eyes softened, brow crinkling in its usual ironic humor.

"To have and to hold, in sickness and in health—perhaps even to know—in a strictly Biblical sense, mind you." He looked off into the distance. "I don't think plumbing your depths would be healthy for a man my age. "

The faint feeling that something both deliciously indecent and highly insulting had just been said, but not caring a fig either way—that was loving Rhett. She flung herself at him, for once not caring at all what her mother, what _anyone_, not even he, would say or think or do.

Familiar scents mingled—cigars and magnolia, the past and the future. Discordant but intoxicating—

"Oh, Rhett…" Scarlett closed her eyes and breathed deeply—home at last. "…You won't regret it, I swear."

His laughter broke an otherwise tender moment by affronting the creature in his lap to no end.

"What is so damn funny?"

"What an inauspicious way to start afresh, my dear." At her confused expression, he continued, "I thought we'd at least have a day or two before regret came into it."

"Don't be ridiculous—I only meant that I love you as well, and I promise to try very hard to prove it to you. Of course you have to twist what I say and make me look like…like some sort of—"

"—Irish wool merchant, reassuring his clientele that the rumors of hoof rot are entirely untrue?" The words were out of his mouth before he had time to access to what degree they'd be appreciated.

"I think you're making fun of me, Rhett Butler."

When was the last time they'd talked like this, all goading and banter and the promise of something more? It had been too long, and as ridiculous as the whole argument was, it felt too natural for either one of them to let it go.

This was coming home, too.

"Perhaps making 'light of' would be more appropriate." He gave her a wicked squeeze. "Losing to me has done little to temper your combative spirit, I see."

"If you think I'm going to let you walk all over me—"

"Rest assured—" he cut her off, deftly, kissing her exposed neck. "If ever I should find myself filled with regret, I will merely conjure up an image of you on top of that card table."

"_Rhett!_" Despite her protestations, he could practically feel his wife's face flush.

"One wonders what might have occurred, has there not been that _untimely _interruption…"

The fact that she did not slap him at that last comment was proof that this was real. Scarlett was, after all, like him, and like all Southerners, a lover of hopeless causes. For so long he'd not allowed himself to believe her feelings were genuine, instead thinking that her manic need to get him back was fueled by the same irrepressible, quintessentially Irish driving force that drove her to do everything in her life. But it wasn't instinct, or gumption, or the childish need to have something denied that had brought her to Charleston.

It was love. A love just as passionate and selfish as his own—but a love all the same.

Some time later, having found _some_ way to pass the time, Rhett returned to the discarded paper.

"Scarlett, a thought strikes me."

His wife, currently curled up on his lap like a luxuriating cat, stirred.

"What is it?" She yawned, and a small amount of guilt niggled at him for disturbing this rare moment of peace. He tapped the wrinkled newspaper in front of him thoughtfully.

"This is the closest thing to a love letter either one of us has ever written," he started, amused. "And you had to be coerced into hiring someone else to pen it, signed it with a pseudonym and refer to yourself in the third person."

Scarlett blinked up at him sleepily. The fading light from outside the window did little to illuminate the long look she gave him.

"You haven't written me _any_ nice love letters." She finally said, with surprising dryness.

"That's a fair point. I shall have to compose a sonnet to your eyes and, er—other virtues." Not find his ridiculous chatter particularly interesting—Rhett reveled in his own cleverness more than needed encouraging—she burrowed back into the folds of his coat. "I, of course, defer to on the matter of a hired pen. Do you think Longfellow charges by the line?"

"Don't even talk about it," she muttered into his pocket. "I hate to think of it at all."

"Why?"

"Because," she whispered, drifting off into the first peaceful sleep she'd had in God knows how long. "Letters mean you'll be far away."

He lay one hand on her head, thoughtfully considering it.

"…You have a talent for inadvertent profundity, Scarlett. Has anyone ever told you that?"

Of course, by then she had already fallen back asleep.

**I can't believe it's been over two years since we decided to get all sunny and funny and have a contest. Thank you everyone for all the support, encouragement and criticism over the years of writing this and other stories. The GWTW fandom has gotten me through more than a few rough patches. I hope you enjoyed TWIMC as much as I (usually) enjoyed writing it. Alica, sorry it took me so long to fill your prompt—I hope you enjoyed it. **


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